National Cross Country Championships 2012 - Parliament Hill fields, NW3

10M single (including 12k cross country, 4k warm up and a cool down)

Morpeth team in 11th place, my position = 210

The National returned to its London home on Saturday, 12 traditional & rolling kilometres through the Hampstead scrubland. Good to see another strong field for this years National Cross Country, helped I'm sure by being back in London. Indeed, it tends to get some of the legends out. Ron Hill amongst others sighted on the course. Superb weather too, the course itself ended up being a rather fast one. Helped by dry weather on the day itself and most likely the frosty conditions underfoot for the last 2 or 3 weeks which undoubtedly kept the going good to firm.

I was reasonably pleased with the race. The goal is still there to break into the Top 100 before I'm 30, that's for sure, but yesterday's 210 probably wasn't as bad as it looks. Last year I finished in 176th out of a field of 1,300. The field was over 1,600 this year - a mammoth turn out. The start was mayhem as normal. The long drag up towards Kite Hill before curving and funnelling down towards the ponds. The lesson to learn for next time is to hit it harder up the hill, the recovery time off the top is substantial given the bottle neck. That said, it was pleasing to know that I hadn't gone off too hard.

The course was two laps and by the end of the first I was feeling strong. Definitely a (positive) symptom of having solid mileage in the legs ahead of the marathon. Wasn't too much of a surprise not to feel stronger up the hills given that XC training / hills haven't featured much this year in the training. Pleasing also to feel as strong as I did in the last 1k, it must have been a pretty fast one too, being mostly downhill. I'm usually getting past at this point in a race, but it must have netted out pretty much as 'nil' and without a doubt was helped by the stamina built up over significant mileage since late January.

As should be expected, you tend to get pulled around by those that you run with, I don't think there was much of a difference in pace between position 210, nor position 150, I think a lot of that can be accounted for by the start hill and getting up there in a reasonable spot. I had pretty much the same people around me for all the race and the gap was less 40s or so up to 160th. Lesson learnt for next time.

Good end to the day in Chilli's in Epsom with Sanger and a good Durham alumni crows. Good also to catch up with Geoff from Durham at The Magdala post race too.

The prep now needs to be focused towards the Finchley 20 in a couple of weeks, a warm up just 6-weeks before marathon day