As promised, ditches and fences

Now that was some REAL cross country today, what fun!

6km for the open women.

To my very unexperienced legs it sure was a tough course with some decent hills, sure we were rewarded with the corresponding down hill but phew, the ups were fearsome tough. As promised there was a fence to vault or in my case, slow down and carefully climb over, it’s not sheep stations at my end of the field. There was also a series of ditches to jump at the back end of the course, most of them I managed nicely, however by the time I got to the last one the sides were chopped up pretty bad and I didn’t trust myself so I ended up planting one foot in the puddle right in the middle.

Yeah, forgot to mention, the open women ran last for a change, that meant that all the juniors and the open men had gone before us so the course was nicely roughed up for us

After the last ditch there was a short sharp hill and will admit that I stopped to walk briefly, until a supporter encouraged me to pick up and take small steps, the gee up helped and I was running again within about 30 seconds.

We finished on a downhill coming into a flat 150 metre run into the finish line. We only had 6 girls running today and I was in 5th position so was not running for team points by that stage, not an excuse to take the foot off the gas though and I decided to at least salvage some honour for myself and challenge someone to the line. There was a Richmond girl who I had been chasing for most of the run, she was about 20 metres ahead so I started to reel her in, finally nabbed her about 20 metres from the end and pipped her to the line

Was so glad I wore my spikes today, they gave me more confidence on the downhills especially, in flats I would have been worried about going arse over. No muddy legs Ewen but the spikes are definitely not white any more, the one that went in the puddle is kinda brown now and the other has taken on a fetching speckled effect, damn they were comfortable though. I gave them a bit of a scrub and now they are sitting next to the ducted heating vent.

Umm, yes it was a tough course but my time tells me 2 things, gotta get my butt back to speedwork and gotta do more hill training, I finished in 29:42 at least it was less than 5 minute Kms, just.

I had a bit of a hairy ride home and ended up pulling off the freeway to get petrol, not because I really needed it but just to collect myself. The first 10km or so was a 110 zone and there was an articulated truck weaving between the left and right lanes. He eventually settled into the left lane (not before cutting me off and causing me to break heavily, arsehole!) and I set about overtaking just to get the hell away from the erratic psycho, but out of no where I had some monster 4WD looming in my rear view mirror, it had a big sticker on the front windshield that said “Mud Slut”, classy! Now I’ll confess, I was doing about 120 and this guy was right up on my tail, cheeky bastard, there was the truck next to me and I was moving past, no way was I doing more than 120 for anyone. I finally overtook the truck and jumped in front of him, the 4WD races past me fast and close enough for my car to be rocked by the draught AND the truck driver from hell accelerates and all I see is this grill filling my rear view mirror. Seriously, what the hell is with that shit! Do they have a fatality quota to fill or something!

This was really winding me up hence the petrol stop, better to just take a breather and calm down and leave the loonies to it.

Now, why did I think it was a good idea to enter a fun run though the hills of Belgrave et al the day after a tough cross country, why????

Best I have an early night.

Ps - Ewen, not sure I’ll be able to catch Victor to say Hi, not up to 3 minute Kms myself