A magnificent seven made their way from Atherton train station Saturday for the 2 hour trek to Barrow for the last Cross Country race this season. The Ruscoe clan (Mark, Dave & Greg), Terry G, Derek, Brenda & Me. Straightforward trip apart from Mark making full use of all the services on the way (think he was on a weight loss programme!). Thought I might get a few “are we nearly there yet” comments from the back of the car but that runner never made it! The organisers had done a great job of finding the only flat bit of fields in the Lake district and my initial thoughts were this is a bit of a boring course round football fields. Actually wasn’t too bad because there was another bit on trails which also had superb views across the bay and towards the mountains beyond (I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that all XC courses have something good!). It was a lovely sunny day, not cross country weather at all. Think we’ve been a bit blessed this year with the weather for XC apart from the Antarctic conditions in Townley Park!
I set off quickly (for a change!) but was left in the wake of Mark who probably felt like this was just a stroll in the park after his last trip to the lakes (6 hours up the mountains in 2ft of snow with Paul J on their Bob Graham recce). Terry followed me round closely all the way followed by Derek who was pleased to get round with no flare ups from recent injury. Then the battle royal between Dave & Greg. It was Greg’s first race for the club so Dave was pacing him round but 200 yds from the finish Greg decided he’d blow his older brother away in a sprint finish! One of the best finishes of the day saw Dave victorious (think there might be a few Ruscoe battles in the future) with our latest member Barry Allman (running for Horwich) sandwiched between them. Greg still has something to learn from Mark though about weight loss, better to do it before the race than after via Bulemia! Fantastic performance by Greg though in his first cross country. Brenda had another good solid performance in the ladies race and was there to cheer us on throughout our race.
Then it was back to the tent, or it would have been if someone had remembered it! Instead we went to have a look at Chorley’s tent. They asked us whether we wanted to join their club and I was tempted just to get out of the cold (some cloud had come over and the temperature had dropped a lot). They were also having a celebration with some sparkling wine and one of their lady runners was telling me all about the virtues of their “quick erect” tent. It was a lot bigger than ours so I think we are going to look at getting one for next XC season. Hopefully it will be easier getting it down than our current tent, though we’ve never had any problems getting it up. Can’t have other teams saying theirs is bigger than ours! After our nice warm coffee, vimto and biscuits (thanks Brenda) it was time for a nice healthy hot dog (or two) and then on our way home. That’s it for XC for this season (probably start again October) but there’s plenty of fell runs for that off road experience!
As for the final league positions - Our ladies finished 2nd in Division 3 & our veteran men won Division 3. Well done to them.
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