How was your weekend running?

There are people who love cross country racing. They revel in the changes of gradient and pace, in the freezing weather and gallop around, quite probably singing “Mud, mud, glorious mud” to themselves while merrily hurdling tree trunks and dodging brambles.

These people need help.

Oh ok, I’m sure it’s all very lovely and hearty and good for you and back to nature and all that. But give me a lovely tarmac road race, or a 400m track, any time. Actually, I don’t mind running cross country, I just don’t like (understatement of the year) racing it. Admittedly this is largely because of the logistics: half a day spent getting to and from a muddy field just to run for about half an hour – still less then the men run, mind, because obviously us women would probably keel over and die of hysteria if we had to run a whole 8km. Throw in the epic queues for the two working loos in the area, and in my case zero warm up due to my six year old support crew having a bit of a wobbly, and you don’t make for a great race. With apologies to lovely Nonsuch Park, I can think of many places I’d rather have spent Saturday …

I should have kept the XC shoes on for Sunday’s junior parkrun (my youngest’s 21st run, and 32nd for her sister – not bad going for six and eight years old!) as our local Wimbledon Park course is beginning to be liberally decorated with its own winter mud. In fact I think it might even be time for some junior parkrun tourism – anyone got a course reasonably local to SW London, with no mud? I’m afraid it turns out that mud aversion is hereditary …

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