Three Counties League #1 Wellingborough
Some of my teammates have referred to this as a stream. Others have called it a brook. I don’t know what the difference between a stream and a brook is — or which one this might be — and I don’t really care. All that bothers me at this precise moment, is how I can get myself out of the thing. I tried to jump across, but it was on tired legs; I knew I’d never make it all the way, and I didn’t. Nor did I make it the time before. It’s too wide; you have to get wet. But you don’t have to get quite as wet as I am now. Which is annoying. But what’s more of an issue at the present moment, is getting myself up and out and onwards to the finish. The finish. Does such a thing even exist? I can’t quite believe it does, but it must. It has to. A hand, a big helping hand, which I notice fleetingly is encased in a surgical glove (why?), takes my arm and lifts me up, and I’m on my feet and climbing up the slippery bank of the stream-or-brook and then up the slope and the finish is near and I’m going well. And then I’m not.
This was my first race in the colours of North Herts Road Runners (NHRR), the club I joined second claim after moving out of London at the start of the summer. They’re based in Letchworth, a 20-minute jog from my home in Hitchin, and I’ve been training with them whenever injuries and work have permitted. They compete in the same summer road race league as Barnet, and you’re only permitted to run for your first claim club in county, regional and national championships, so there aren’t many opportunities for me to run for them. But with cross-country, there’s no problem: I can run for NHRR in the Three Counties Cross-Country League (3CXC) and Barnet in the Met League and the rest.
Which is how I find myself in deepest Northamptonshire, on an otherwise pleasant October morning, in a borrowed vest (new ones not currently available), on my hands and knees, up to my elbows in muddy water. Once out of the water and up the hill, it’s dig-in time as there’s another steep bank and then an undulating section, where you seem to bob up and down as if on choppy water, and then its steeply downwards and straight back up again. This — not the stream (or the brook) — is the worst bit. This is where it goes wrong.
From the end of the first mile, after we’ve settled into our positions and we’re more or less where we’re meant to be, I’ve been chasing a runner in a Northampton vest. I caught him going up a hill at the end of mile two only for him to catch me back as soon as we headed back down. This always happens. I am skinny — even by distance running standards — which means there’s not a huge amount of me to carry, and so I tend to find hills less of a problem than most. It’s going down them quickly that I seem to find undoable. In race after race, I get myself locked into battles with comparable runners: I take them going up, they take me back going down. I know to let myself fall, to lean into it, to let gravity do the work, and I’m certainly better at it than I used to be, but I do not have the ability that Northampton Man evidently does, of simply tumbling downwards, happily accelerating as if nothing bad could possibly happen.
Our concertina-like progress seemed finally to have come to an end when I took him on a gradual incline at the three-and-a-half mile point and soon stopped hearing his breathing in my ear. But after that final dip in the water feature, coming down this last hill I hear him again, positively thundering down towards me. I just about hold position to the bottom and feel confident I can keep ahead of him going back up the incline, when he puts in an incredible spurt and takes me — going up hill! His arms are flailing and he’s breathing hard, but his legs are piston-like as they power up the hill and away from me. I know I should be able to take him back, I know not to lose position now that we are so close to the end, but for some reason the physical strength required of me to do so just isn’t there. Nor, I suspect, is the mental strength, which is worrying.
The thing to tell yourself during a race, is that no matter how bad you feel, you’ll feel a lot worse afterwards if there’s anything about it you regret. And now, thanks to letting myself be taken going up hill, by a runner I thought I’d dropped, and not having enough to take him back, in my first race for the club, I’m left with regrets. I finish in 10th position. It should have been 9th.
On the plus side, there were three other Squirrels (NHRR runners) ahead of me. Four in the top ten is a decent result. It’s eight to score (four of which must be Vets, which is not a problem for us), so the men’s team finish second on the day. Men and women race together in this league, and so the combined team comes third overall.
The 80-place difference in my finishing position between this and last week’s race at Claybury (where I was 90th and overall more pleased with my performance than today) says a lot for the strength in depth of the Met League. But as Northampton Man so effectively proved, there’s still plenty of competition for the likes of me in races such as this. There’s also a slightly more congenial atmosphere here. It’s partly down to the fact that men and women run together, and perhaps also a result of there being fewer ‘serious’ runners here, that conviviality abounds. It’s in the race organiser’s megaphone address to us all before the start, it’s in the jokes shared amongst the runners in the front pack during the race’s first few hundred yards, and it’s in the hall afterwards, where we huddle in groups, sipping tea and munching cakes and rolls. Commiserating and celebrating and all that there is in between.
As with the Met League, there are five 3CXC fixtures in the season. It looks as though I won’t be able to do the second one, but am definitely planning to the do the rest. I have a score to settle with myself: no more regrets.
