Race Report: Cross Country Classic

WRN @ Cross Country Classic 2014 

Cross country racing is my second favorite event to run (after a road 5k).  Why? The terrain is varied (ie--up and down...up and down...up and down) and you are one with nature.  Plus, as this type of racing isn't as available as a road race, it is more of a spectacle.  So--earlier this year when I found out that the Cross Country Classic was part of the BRIN Running Series, I was pumped.

This past year, I have used training and racing as a way to deal with all of the hardships our family has faced in the past 14 months, and at this time will loudly admit that maybe my eyes (when signing up for races) were a little bigger than my ability to recover from all these "hard" efforts.  Because of this, I have struggled to remain at 100%.  (Gosh--at this point, I would take a solid 90%!)  I had a hard time after the 70.3.  I had a hard time after the marathon.  I had a hard time after Market to Market.

So yeah.  I've been running for many years and know that what I need is a healthy dose of some time off.  After M2M, I took an entire 7 days off.  No running, no cross training.  That being said, my first day back was Monday, October 20th, only 6 days out from the Cross Country Classic.

I knew this was going to be a tough course.  I knew there was going to be even tougher competition.  AND it was supposed to be over 80 degrees? Because of these three factors, I wasn't sure how the day would go.

I met my teammates about an hour to the 2pm start at the Carol Joy Holling Center.  I had raced out here the previous year so knew that this was going to be hard and hilly.  I absolutely loved the start...all of the teams competing were assigned boxes at the front so it definitely had a "Cross Country" feel.  We started right at 2pm.  I darted out per usual and started running up a big hill.  Okay, I can handle this.  However, once I got about a mile in, I felt tired.  Really tired.  And I was breathing harder than I should have been.  I try to be tough during my races, but knew that anyone who was running in my vicinity would know that I was working my butt off.  Luckily, by this point were were pretty spread out to there wasn't a ton of people running past me.

I was thanking my lucky stars when I finally got to mile 4 (the race was 5 miles total)...only ONE MILE left!! I can for sure run one mile!  As this was a team race, the top four scored.  There was only 37 seconds between our first scorer (Amy) and last scorer (me)...this tight of a finish is EXACTLY what you want in Cross Country racing!  Once again, super proud of my WRN teammates!  (I finished as the 11th place female with a time of 36:28.  Not my best effort, but could have been way worse.)

So now what? I am signed up to run The Good Life Halfsy but have a decision to make about this.  I can either bow out (I promise you I am not in shape to race a half right now) or jog it out.  As the race is next weekend (November 9), I am going to see how I feel this next week and go from there.  Unless I get a wild hair, my racing will be over until some point in 2015.

Here's to a GREAT 2014!! Thanks to my wonderful family and WRN for shaping such a great racing year! :)

Complete Race Results can be found here: http://www.onlineraceresults.com/event/view_event.php?event_id=14641