North Wales Cross Country

Today's meet was at Wrexham, just 1 mile away from my house so how could I not go. 

I came forth overall and was close to 2nd. I just got beat in that last mile where the three of us knew it was going to be a fight. At one time in the race I thought I was going to win. But at mile three my club member, James Roberts just went off off into the lead on his own. 

For once I started, so I thought, conservatively being being quite a few at about 6th place, but the first mile was still too quick at 5.15. It goes to show that most runners go off too fast. Miles 2 and 3 where fun, i was working hard but slowly catching the lead group i knew I'd catch them because they went off too quick. i smiled at the thought of catching them. Paul Jones was leading and when i caught up to him at mile three, as I've already said, James went off like a rocket and left about four of us to battle it out. 

A runner from Oswestry called Oli was very strong in the last half mile and i got boxed in behind a runner we were lapping which i think cost me third place but who really knows. 

Overall i was also pleased with my average pace of 5.25 for the 5.5.5mile course, my fastest pace ever on cross country. 

End.

Welsh Cross Countries Inter Regional - Builth Wells

Just a note:
2012: 8th 6:03 pace
2011: 13th 5:50 pace

2013 13th. Strong field today.

  It started to rain near the end. Bex and Karla were getting wet. Hail a bit Too! ce opposite way around again. I think Andrew Davies won it. He's quick, North Wales.

I've now seen the results and it's difficult to judge how well I've done. Been onto The Power of 10 and can see that Nathaniel Lane, who was ahead of me by 40 seconds, wis a better runner than me but other than that the other runners are hard to compare against because they're young or they only do X country.

Other news, the weekend was great, usually I f read the long drive down to Builth Wells but this time I took my wife and daughter down. We had a stop on the way down and drove slowly. Then after the race I'd booked a b and b, The Three Wells in a village called Howey. It was really nice, the decor was a bit old but the staff, food were great. Also it was a quite with no main roads or dogs. I might do the same next year.

On the Sunday I christened my new off road shoes and ran through open fields around my house.  Descovered new paths through agolf ccourse and to a village called Holt. Usually I run on roads to Holt.

"Now or never" v. reservedly

I saw this sprayed onto a road around the Great Orme which is a narrow road around a large peninsular at Llandudno, North Wales this morning. The message was for the rally car drivers who used the road the day before but it made me think about yesterday's cross country race. 

I had the best cross country race of my running career so far. I've judged that on my pace for the course which was an average of 5m43s. I also based it on my position. I approached the race slightly different in mental terms; almost a "now or never" mentality. When running around I kept trying to focus on speed, I was trying to go fast in the moment and not reserve anything for later because I needed to trust and have faith in my endurance. It's tough to convince myself to run fast, I managed to do it for the first mile and then lost focus, then regained focus then lost focus again. I wonder what makes me loose my focus? Is it being not fast enough or fit enough? I don't know. 
What I would like to try one day is a real "now or never" race. To not reserve anything for the miles ahead and just to run at 5m/m for as far as I can without having the finish in mind. I somehow trick the mind into thinking each 100metres of the race is the only 100metres. Is it possible; no it isn't because we all run reservedly because we don't want people to say "he went off too fast". 
Maybe I will go too fast and take a chance at my next race. We'll see. Has anyone else gone off without holding back and had a pleasant surprise? Is it worth doing once in a while?