Verneuil x-country - departmental challenge

Plenty of work on at the moment and this is my first opportunity to update my blog in a while. This Sunday in question, I was taking part in the first of the cross country races planned for the Paris region, starting with the Yvelines department challenge where I was running in the veteran's race, the first of the day.

It was a cold morning with a layer of frost everywhere. Another one of those days where you wonder why you run and even on my warm-up I was suffering from minor frostbite on my fingers. I'd had two late night's out the previous evenings and I really wasn't looking forward to the event. I am not keen on cross-country even at the best of times and with the weather like this and a distinct lack of sleep, I was putting on a brave face for a difficult moment.

I met the rest of the vets team and we warmed up together: José, Thierry, Olivier, Bruno W, Charles and several others. We were 17 in total from the club taking part in this race and I was hoping to finish in front of José and Thierry for the first time ever due to my improvement and their lack of training and race practise recently. The race was around 3 loops next to the Seine at Verneuil and measured around 9km in total. I hesitated about whether to put spikes on or not as the ground was largely frozen and there were patches of tarmac around the course. After a lot of indecision, I finally slipped them on 2 minutes before the start.

We lined up at the start in a wide line and when the gun went off, I set off at what seemed a reasonable pace. I didn't want to burn myself out from the outset and I kept an eye on Olivier about 15 metres in front. He's a cross country specialist and is back in shape after a few months of taking it easy. I figured that I was in the right spot. It was only about half way around the first lap that I saw Thierry and José running together ahead and I focused on reeling them in. I passed them about 3/4 of the first loop and I knew that José had stuck with me since I heard our supporters cheering his name just after mine on the way round.

The cheers for him faded on the second lap slightly so I knew that I'd made a little break and from then on I was happy enough just to maintain my position. My motivation wasn't very high and I could feel the tiredness in my legs from Thursday's intervals. I chased Mr Moustache man from Houilles for the remainder of the race and just when it looked as though I would catch him on the final lap, 2 runners that I'd been dragging behind me went past and I didn't have the energy to follow. Mr Moustache finished just ahead (a V2 to boot!)

Splits went as follows: 3:40, 3:45, 3:58, 4:01, 3:54, 4:00, 4:06, 3:58, 3:56.

Too slow to recover from the uphills and general fatigue over the second half of the race. Nevertheless, when I checked the finishers around me, they were generally 35 - 37 minute 10km runners so I was at my level.

So finished all up in 34:24 in 38th place from 172.

Video of the first lap here after 800m. You can see me at around the 29" mark.