Dead Runners society race report
109th English National XC championships, Newark - saturday
9th march 1996
I had a not so merry Xmas holiday at home in
Warrington as I fell down stairs and fractured my shoulder. As well as breaking
some bones I also broke my 9 year 146 day streak of consecutive running days
:-(. It took some time to get back running well again. I made my comeback to
serious racing in the biggest race of the club runners year, the
NATIONAL.
Afternoon everyone
Hello from foggy Cambridge, we all thought spring had sprung yesterday but today its very cold and foggy, back to winter today :-(
Saturday I travelled up to Newark in Nottinghamshire to run "The National", the highlight of the XC season for the ordinary club runner, the chance to run through the mud for 9 miles against the best runners in the land.
I travelled up with my team mates from Cambridge University Hare and Hounds, we needed an older person to drive the minibus for insurance purposes and I got lumbered with the job :-( I had to get up early on a saturday (my lie in day) and cycle out the minibus hire place. I got the bus back to the meeting point for 9.00am and as is usual for Hare and Hounds outings we left Cambridge for 10.00am! I'd not driven anything since september when I sold my car but it wasn't too bad a trip up the A14/A1 to the Newark. We arrived about 3 hours before my race as we had some young whippersnappers running in the under 20 races.
I was down to run the National for my first claim club, Spectrum Striders and I was looking forward to seeing and racing against my old friends again. Unfortunately none of them turned up so I was a one man team :-(
Eventually it was time to warm up, I did an easy mile and then
lined up ready for the cavalry charge. Over 2000 runners
were running in the senior men's 9 mile race but there was
a very wide start line so each club could their best
runners at the front. Bang and 2000 runners crossed the line in a couple of seconds, one of the great sights of running. The pace for
the first 1/2 mile was ludicrously fast before things
settled down. There was
a fairly muddy bit before
we left the showground area and started the first of 2 laps
out round some farmland. I felt OK after a mile but it was just a case of running round in a big pack of runners, continually
passing and being passed. I ran the National here in 1988
on a dead flat course but the course had changed to put a
little hill in it, up and down the
hill and back to the
showground and past the Hare and Hounds cheering section
:-) Round we went again and I was a bit tired by now, up the hill was OK but I struggled a bit on the way down and lost a few places
towards the end of the lap. Past the cheering section and
speeded up a bit. The National for senior men is
traditionally 3 big laps to make up the 9 miles but this
year they changed it so that the 3rd big lap was not the same as the 1st 2. Back onto the flat showground, this was quite tough as
the route was very twisty in from here to the finish, we
kept doubling back so you could see lots of runners ahead
of you and you could hear the finish announcer from miles
out. So far the course had been fairly muddy but not too
bad but we hit some really thick mud around here, if it had been raining it would have been awful. I plodded on through the mud and
managed
to get a few places back to 8 miles but lost a
few more after that on the endless twists and turns before
we finally reached the finish straight. Ran in slightly
harder to the end and even managed to sort of "outsprint" someone :-) Rather tired on finishing, my feet were very sore, I had
some bloody socks on when I finally managed to get my XC
spikes off.
61.14 for about 9 miles, I still haven't broken the hour for the national but that wasn't too bad. I found the National results on the web and I was 1770th/1954 about 90% of the way down the field which is where I normally finish in the National, this was the 5th time I ran the great race.
John Nuttall (3rd in 94 commonwealth games 5000m) of Preston Harriers (one of my former clubs :-)) won the race. 1993 London marathon champ Eamonn Martin finished 14th, he'd twice won the National at Newark. My young clubmates did well, we got 2nd individual and 2nd team in the u/20 mens race and we got 5th and 8th in the u/20 ladies race :-) Nnenna Lynch of Oxford University won the ladies race, for the 2nd year in a row an american lady is english XC champion.
Didn't see any other DRUnKs there, were you there Richard, Paul, any others?
ORN, tonight, hopefully after the fog has lifted.
bye
tony....
tony bell
ageing chemistry student and
marathoner
department of chemistry
university of cambridge
amtb2@cam.ac.uk
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