I had allowed my name to be entered provisionally for this race and decided during the week to give it a go, on the premise that I could just treat it as an exceptionally hard training session. We had a significantly better squad out than last year but I thought I stood a good chance of being one of the counters for the team, even with the foot injury. Although conditions were fine, I couldn't risk running in spikes so I went with the Inov-8 Roclite 285. I got off to a fast start and was third for Garscube for a while before I started to struggle to maintain the pace, having found it as difficult as last year to climb the long hill behind Callendar House, and I dropped to fifth counter later in the lap.
The trail shoes were working out OK but I was suffering from lack of fitness and losing quite a few places, eventually dropping to sixth counter just over halfway round the second lap. I fought the urge to give up and committed myself to completing the race by starting the final lap. However, on the path beside the lake I felt some foot pain coming on and would most likely have stopped if I hadn't still been a counter. I had also looked back a few times but there was nobody from Garscube close behind. Made it to the end of the lap, finishing the 7.44 miles in an anonymous 198th place and 48:13 officially but 48:10 on my watch, for a reasonable average pace of 6:28/mile, and just over a minute down on last year which wasn't too bad under the circumstances. I don't think it's really possible to run a decent 12K cross-country on just 20 miles a week. The team finished 11th, 1 point ahead of Carnegie, whose final counter was one place ahead of me. We'd have needed to score 100 points fewer to finish in the top 10.
Pace splits: 6:07, 6:14, 6:15, 6:47, 6:34, 6:51, 6:37, 6:03
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