Cross country and other stuff
I've been pretty busy at work lately and definitely not blogging as much as I had been, but things have been going pretty well. I brought out the spikes a few weeks ago for a cross country race in Ann Arbor (photo above) and did ok in less than ideal conditions (cold, very windy, half inch of rain the night before). I finished 4th overall and thought I ran as well as I could for the day (don't even ask me what my time was!), but man does XC hurt. Normally, I don't get the dry heaving feeling until about a half-mile to go, but in that race it was more like a mile to go! But then, cross country is the most challenging when it's run on a tough course. The race was a good reminder that cross country really is a different sport than track or road racing. Sure, you need to do pretty similar training to be good at both, but you definitely need to get in the practice racing off road before your peak race. Club Nationals is on December 12 so I have a few more tune ups before that. This Saturday, I will be running in the Twinsburg Turkey Trot, which is half on roads and half on metro park gravel trails. On Nov. 21 the guys on my team, Second Sole Rocky River, will be doing a 4 mile cross country time trial. Trainingwise, my workouts have been faster over the last few weeks than any time of the year, so I'm a little bummed that I don't have a flat, fast road 5K coming up, but I'm happy to be in really good shape for cross country nationals.
Was that at Hudson Mills in Dexter? I did an XC race there back in July and huffed and puffed my way to one of my slowest 5K times in a good long while. It was humbling. :)
It was at Buhr Park. Yeah, XC can be humbling, but it is fun in a weird kind of way!
For me it was a return to my roots, as I spent all of high school running cross-country. I hadn't run a race on grass in 18 years before I did the one in July.