About a quarter past three and we were off. Settled into a nice quick pace for the first lap, then managed to tell myself to leave something in the tank so tucked in behind a few runners to coast along for the next two laps. Then with about 1.5 laps to go and with a few words of encouragement from Matt and crew (pity Matt couldn't race, unluckily, he got injured in the warm-up), I picked up the pace a little and passed a couple of runners, for the last lap all I could do was hold this gap and finished comfortably in 7th place. Luckily I did have the sense to pass that Craughwell runner with 1 lap to go. In the team event, Craughwell and GCH finished level on points, but in a tie it comes down to the last scoring runners. I finished in 7th being GCH's last scoring runner and with Craughwell's last scoring runner in 8th, we may have leveled on points but this got us the Galway XC Team title! great day out!
A nice 3k warm down chatting about how the race unfolded. Craughwell were very unlucky, their runners seemed to be dropping like flies with injuries during the race.
The two days rest did me the world of good, legs felt great and I seemed to have plenty in the tank towards the end. I could really feel the plantar fascia was a little swollen on both feet so that could be down to the new shoes, some easy running should sort that out again.
Also managed to get the Novice XC County title, so two gold medal's in one race, I'll take that one!
I wore the HR monitor again, this time I averaged 189 bpm, 4 bpm lower than my average for the 10km Road Race last weekend and cross country I was at a faster pace! Just goes to show what a taper can do!
6.47 km in 22:47 (3:31's) Avg HR 189
