LIFA cross country - Les Mureaux

I didn't want to run this and I wasn't disappointed. I'll keep the story short as I was unhappy with my run, unhappy about the pace and unhappy by beaing beaten by Mr Moustache from Houilles.

I turned up for the veterans race and was surprised to see that there were only 3 of us from the club: Eric, Robin and myself. José, Bruno, Thierry and Olivier had all pulled out, leaving us without a team (4 runners necessary). I warmed up feeling fairly lousy as I had a heavy stomach from breakfast which had not worn off. I wondered if this would disappear as soon as the race started.

I lined up and it was a fast start from the gun. My stomach was ever present and I was heavy in my legs, just not in the race at all. We had 2 medium laps to run and then 2 big laps. I was ahead of Mr Moustache from the start and Nico warned from the sidelines that he was just behind me at the start of the second lap. He overtook me shortly afterwards and I never had the capacity to pull back the ground he made at this point. The distance didn't grow as the laps went on but I couldn't pull up the energy to accelerate and chase him down.

The pace was very similar to Montesson despite the course being a lot flatter and faster in theory. I averaged 3:53 over the course and just felt that I under-achieved. I was never in the race mentally and really just hanging on from the start. Very disappointing and a pathetic performance that I'll try and put behind me.

Nico ran a good race in the seniors. He set off slowly letting the leaders pull away before accelerating in the second half of the race and slowly clawing his way back through the field beating Guillaume R, a good road-runner in the process. Wish I could have done the same.