Last year's race report.
I keep forgetting to finish this report off. For so long now that I have forgotten chunks of what I was going to write. Here is a combination of the bits I did write at the time and then some filler around the edges.
In previous years I took my mountain bike and road from my parents house to and from the race course in Quarrelwood. Since I still haven't replaced my mountain bike I was left with the choice to drive round to the start line or jog from home. I decided to jog up to the start line. About half way there I had to stop and change from my warm-up trainers into my race shoes because even the path to the course was too wet.
I jogged up to the start and did a short warm-up. I was managing to get round and chat to a lot more people than I have previously been able to.
Before the race started I just hung around at the back again. Once the race started I tried to stay in a group for the first lap. I figured if I pushed along a little and tried to stay in a faster group I might do slightly better than getting stuck between groups like I did at Forres.
The first half of the lap is generally downhill on nice tracks, but then it turns and start to head back through a section with a lot more tree routes and then a really muddy section. The mud was bordering on extreme in places, but I was coping as well with it as everyone else around me. At the end of the first lap I started to ease away from the group I was in. I was doing a better pace than I had planned so I was happy to drop the group. There were a few individuals ahead and I started working on trying to pick them off. I was making progress and keeping it fairly steady.
Coming into the last climb there were a couple of people ahead of me. I managed to get past one through the muddy section at the bottom. It took a fairly committed sprint finish to just pip the other guy, who it turns out I beat by nearly a minute at Keith and the other places around me were all similarly about a minute faster on comparative times.
In places I was 49th out of 65 finishers. Last year I said I should be competing with runners around the 40-place mark. I was still a couple of minutes off that, but I haven't really been running as well this year so it would have been greedy to think I could have improved that much.
Against my own time from last year I was about 30 seconds quicker. But with the mud on the course this year the course should have been a good bit slower so I am still pleased with my overall time. Also I was much more consistent. Last year I started and finished with faster laps but slogged round the middle one, this year all three laps were pretty much even.
So again I am pretty much happy enough with how I ran.
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