On the 9th February, Dublin Frontrunners hosted the third Meet & Train of the 2024/25 season at Marino Institute. The day was clear and a bit cold. I ran my first cross-country race since the ‘90s in January at the DSD campus, and was regrettably cavalier about checking out the course. Why would I want to do that?! I thought. Sure I’ll just see how it goes! Remorse. So this time around I very much wanted to see where we’d be running. We did a warmup lap and found the course to be fairly flat and dry. For some strange reason I kept saying, “looks much easier than last time”. More remorse.
After a few strides we started off. The Marino route begins with a small hill which at warmup was absolutely fine but after everyone had warmed up on it had become very muddy – and we had our first fall of the race (not mine, but I’d say i was not too far off). Other than the hill and another dodgy spot, the course was great. Feeling absolutely on top of the world I ignored literally all of the advice I’d been given and set off fast. I was flying! Until around the end of the first lap, when I started to feel it…I lost a lot of ground and had to really push to keep going. AnnMarie’s support on the course was invaluable as was that of the other runners – everyone has such encouraging words for each other (I’d relay them but there were too many curse-words). Shauna O’Callaghan was the first Sportsworld lady home.
By the final lap I was held together with twine but I saw AnnMarie and mustered up enough energy/pride to pass a few runners in the final push before stumbling home. In an indecent amount of time we’d forgotten all the agony and had a lovely cooldown lap before heading into the hall to enjoy the spread. It was impressive – so much so that we were given doggy bags. I got some more good advice from the wonderful ladies in the club about pacing and I have convinced myself that I learned a lot that I can implement at the next Meet and Train. You underestimate cross-country at your own peril – it is so different to road racing. Cross-country is an absolute shock to the system but (coupled with the sheer volume of baked goods you get afterwards) strangely addictive!
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