Cross country.
It causes a bit of a marmite reaction. The hatred usually comes from some teenage trauma, when a P.E. lesson in the winter rain has forced you to shiver in your vest and shorts on some grubby mound at the far corner of the school grounds. With memories like that it’s hard to voluntarily pull on that vest again and try to find the love.
Yet.
A beautifully sunny autumn morning with the trees gently shaking off the last of their adornments is a perfect time to rediscover an age when mud and mayhem was a source of joy. In the childhood before those secondary school compulsions.
For our first cross country race of the season, we had such a day. Parking up on the wide avenues by Clarke Gardens in Liverpool, our full carload of Pensby runners toppled out to crunch through the leaves to the rows of club tents already raised up by the starting line.
The park used to be part of the private estate of Allerton Hall, a grand house that went through a lot of hands including William Roscoe, one of Britain’s first Abolitionists, and Richard Wright, a merchant who supported the South during the American Civil War (as did many in Liverpool) and raised a Confederate flag above Allerton Hall. Finally, after falling into the hands of Thomas Clarke, a tobacco merchant, it was donated, along with the land to the City of Liverpool by his widow.
It’s a beautiful park, especially on this fine morning, with fields and wooded areas aplenty. I caught up with sister number two before the race, who’d come with her club, Warrington Road Runners. She had brought cake for her team and suggested, if I’d got around the course in a handy manner that there might be some left over.
Oh, if only a piece of lemon drizzle dangling in front of me were enough to get me to run faster.
I’ve done this course before a couple of time, so I know that it’s not too hilly, but it does have some long inclines here and there. It begins with a nice downhill on the grass. A galloping thunder of spikes and sinews pushing down the blades to a flat carpet of green – at least they were galloping from the front.
It’s a course that does a couple of small laps of the field followed by two large wonky laps through other fields and the woods. Historically (as in the last couple of years according to my own personal knowledge) there is a bit where we cross a little deep ditch after stomping through some deep gloopy stuff beforehand, the kind of gloop that sucks your shoes off if you’re not careful.
The water (black/brown liquid but don’t think about its contents too much) has gone up to my knees before, but today, the ditch was dry, a mere stepping stone to the bank across the way. Somewhat disappointing, and the marshal apologetically shrugged his shoulders. It meant that the gloop weighed me down for an extra few yards instead of being washed off.
I could put my slower time than last year down to this fact, but in reality, I know I’ve been going backwards in terms of time. A year of trying to go long and getting deeper into perimenopause will do that to you.
It’s not all bad though.
The week before I did two good efforts with a hills run, and a speedy stint on the track. If I can get several weeks of that kind of behaviour in my speed may increase.
Plus, my sis had made ample cake, so I managed to snaffle a piece despite my slow return to the finish. I’d chatted to another Warrington Road Runner along the way. This was the woman’s first rodeo, and she was looking a little bit shell shocked. I tried to reassure her as I think she was going heading out too fast and losing the ability to breathe.
Hopefully though, she’ll get out there and give it a few more goes, and hopefully I didn’t steal her cake.
theleadlesspencil 