Training Log Archive: the kempster

Biked to and from the xc meet which turned out to be a beautiful ride despite the strong head-wind no matter which way I was going. Only had to go on Island Park, and then the rest was on bike paths. Left around the same time as the bus, and got there just after them, plus I made a short stop at home, so it took about the same time, and I helped save the planet! :P

warmup run and stretching with Mel who was the only other junior girl running from Nepean.

Don't know my exact time, so I'll have to wait until they email the times to my coach. The course started out with a 200m run from the finish, with a hill immediately after. Didn't take it too hard out of the gates since I knew a lot of people would, and then die on the hill. I was right, and passed quite of few people who were struggling up the hill which put me in fourth. There was then a really long stretch down to the end of the park and then a loop around onto the beach. Absolutely brutal running on the sand and it was such a long stretch!!! By this time I had made it up to second place but I was in between two St. Peters runners (who were twin sisters) and so whenever we ran past one of their coaches I'd hear, "don't let her catch you Rachel!" and then "come on Rebecca, you can catch her!" What was really annoying was that the girl who was leading kept cutting corners and then once actually started running off the path until I had to call out to her that the flagging was actually over here. We only had to run the hill once, but we had to do loop A twice which meant running the beach again. Before the race, my coach had said that at about the 10min mark, and should step up the pace and really go hard for the last part after the beach. Fortunately, I actually remembered to start my watch, and so at around the 10min mark I started closing in on the leader. I wasn't going to go too fast right before the beach, but then I saw that she was slowing down so I passed her and booted it down the beach. Had enough distance in between me and the St. Peters girl so it wasn't a race into the finish, but I still came in strong. Absolutely exhausted and bloody hot after I finished which is good since that meant that I was going hard enough. First ever xc race that I've ever been the leader let alone won, so it feels really good!

This is the course

C • Good job! 3