National Cross Country - Parliament Hill

Frank wouldn't be caught without his Athletics Weekly







A beautiful sunny day in London saw me (Gareth) and Frank Reddington down in London for the National. Good train ride down with Frank dictating his latest Athletics weekly to me for the journey (Some kind of hypnotic learning means I now know the favourite for the East Devon Shot putt pre season warm up event, even though I wasn't listening).

After a warm up on the Friday night is was off for a pint and a meal before an early night. With very blurred memories of more Althetics weekly and radio 3 wafting in my ears I drifted off for a good nights sleep.

Breakfast in the hotel was good with plenty of wholemeal bread and cereal. Me and Frank then went to pass some time at the Imperial War Museum before heading back to prepare.

The 14 degree weather means its 'singlet' only weather. We head for the course. After taking a long way round to get to the course we watched the junior men and the senior ladies. Sadly no spen athletes in evidence. Then the terrible job of finding the spen 'tent' (which was actually a tree) and our numbers. After mild panic we found Amanda and we were ready. U13 boys had a couple of our runners and one finished 7th (Liam).

Last minute toilet stops (yes stops, must be our age) and then to the massive start. Beating Frank is a neccessity to avoid banter in the pub (poor Frank is the milestone to fitness and always everyone's benchmark for a good race). I was OK though as had been 2 mins faster the week before so I was not under pressure.

The start was the usual gallup and it was the last time I saw Frank. Then into the mud and the hills (well hillets). Very muddy as usual but feeling strong I edged up the pace to 7min mile (yes impressive eh!). Passed Liam Spencer of Keighley half way round lap 1 so I knew I was cooking.

Parliment Hill is the hardest of them all I think, and there was no danger of it being short after all the critism in the Athletics weekly (yes I remember that clearly). So after some 57 minutes (57.12) of running I 'sprinted in'. 985th out of 1455. Frank wasn't as far back as I had realised and came in 1083rd in 58.53 (yes 100+ runners in less than 2 minutes).

Then I was up for a KFC and a copy of Cycling Weekly . We then went out for a bite to eat and a gallon of beer. I don't really remember what I was listening to as I fell asleep but I can't find my cycling weekly and even more worrying is I now know that Doris Sweeney (Tiverton Wheelers) is favourite for the East Devon Ladies O55 50 mile Time Trial!