TCN Cross-Country

Over the past few days I have been feeling pretty nervous because everything was building up to todays race. It was only district cross-country but after last years disappointing race, I was back to take my title and I wasn’t going to settle for anything less. I know this sounds really arrogant but it's just how I am, I strive for victory and every time I step onto a start line, I have my eyes set on first place.

When I woke up this morning the first thought was oh no, not school but then it suddenly hit me, today is the day. I tried to block out the race for the past few days so I didn't get too worked up about it. We were running on a new course this yeah so I was eager to get there and have a look at it. I could feel that I had nerves but I could only see one person that I knew would be tough competition for me. I knew I’d had a good breakfast (7 bananas for breaky- I went on to have 16 today, but that's another story) and I had a half decent warm up, so I knew if my hip held up I had a good chance of making it to the line first.

As we stood on the start line, under the control of the starter nothing else was running through my mind except the race and I asked myself many questions. How should I attack it? What if I can’t hang onto the pace? As the race got under way it turned out to be how I predicted, Hayden from Mossman, my competition and I were out in the lead. I let him set the pace for the first maybe 2km. We came to a slight hill in the track and I felt that I wasn’t going to be able to hang on, but I dug deep. After going over the crest we came to a short but slippery down hill section and as this began Hayden slowed down, probably being cautious, but something in my head said, “GO!”

I put in a small attack down the hill, enough to put the gap between Hayden and myself and I knew he would have to expend some energy if he wanted to catch back up. He caught back up and I was somewhat annoyed because I thought it would have been enough and I didn't want to have to work too hard and use up too much energy in case it came to a sprint finish. As I came into the last lap (3km to go) there was a U-turn on the course and this gave me a good chance to see if I had a gap and I did. It wasn't much but I knew if I picked up my pace a little I should be able to get away.

As we came off the touch fields and entered the bush section I had a quick look behind to see where Hayden was. I knew if I slowed a fraction he would catch up, so I knew I had to run even harder, but I was hurting. I aimed to get around each corner so I would be out of sight when he came around and this helped. I knew with about 600m to go that I was going to win and I felt more relieved than anything after last years race.

I ended up with a time of 21:52 for 6km, which in my opinion is not a bad effort after a pretty inconsistent year. I came through the first 3km in 10:31, and I’m super happy with that. I am off to regionals this Friday where I’ll compete for a spot on the Peninsula team.

Crossing the finish line in the 6km