This was the fourth race in the 2013/14 league and my third, having missed Goodwood. It was a spectacular, spectrally clear and calm January afternoon, all long shadows and people shading their eyes with their hands. After a month of near-solid rain, this was as good as it could possibly be.
10 minutes before the start, Keith confidently told me it was a 3-lap course. I took his word for it because (a) I work with him and he generally knows his stuff and (b) he had been at King's Park since 10:30 in the morning. But just 2 minutes before the start I met Peat, who told me it was 3 laps. I mentally rely on knowing where I am in the course and I would have been badly stymied if I had done 3 laps to be told to do one more.
Off we went, and very quickly we seemed to be all crammed together on a narrow path. I was well back in the field and I had to swallow any frustration and go with the flow. It's so easy to worry about a few metres here or there in the first 2 or 3 minutes but of course that's not the point... plenty of time and open space later on to move forward. And that's exactly what happened - I picked up one runner at a time, over and over, and felt good.
The course was surprisingly firm given the recent rainfall, but there were a couple of tight turn where it was desperately easy to slip, even with spikes on. The last 200m was a right mess but I managed to stay upright and finished in 59th position, which was excellent. My time was 35:38. It's always hard to make comparisons between XC races in different years... but in Jan 2012 I was 73rd with a time of 35:34... a better position and a fractionally slower time today, but in all a terrific afternoon in the sunshine.
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