National XC Relays

The weather for this race was terrible, with howling gales and driving rain. If it had been just a couple of degrees colder I might have had second thoughts. I was first off for Garscube and settled into a reasonable pace although the conditions made it hard to judge, and there seemed to be a lot of runners in front of me. After what might have been a mile, some of them were clearly slowing a bit and I managed to go past quite a large group, although this left me exposed to the elements. There was a long uphill stretch in the second half of the race where it was almost impossible to move on account of strong winds. I lost a place on the subsequent downhill section but made it up again within the last couple of hundred metres. I had been expecting to finish in just over 15 minutes, judging by the the previous year's results, but my time for the 4K course was 16:34. This did however compare fairly well with other times on the day, and I posted the second fastest time for the club. I opted for my trail shoes again and I don't think spikes would have been any better as the going was very heavy. Several hours after the race, it felt as if I had run a marathon instead.