A great day.

Today saw the Ermysteds team travel over to Stockport for the Northern Schools Cross Country Championships. A rather prestigious event, the 'Northerns' attracts schools from all the North such as Lancaster Royal Grammar School, Manchester Grammar and of course ourselves as well as many more. We took various age groups along today. From year 7's to year 13's, we were out doing our bit in the School colours.
The weather started off rather dull but it picked up as the day went on. There was plenty of time for it to pick up in sunny Stockport as our race was at 3.45. We arrived there at around 12.30 (!) so rather a lot of waiting around to say the least. It was good however to watch the youngsters battle it out and enjoy their running. Admittadly our race couldn't come soon enough and I couldn't wait to get it out of the way. After the rather tedious wait, the time came to start warming up. The sun was shining and the outlook was generally very positive. I felt full of energy having stoked up on Porridge, Toast, Lucozade, Jelly Babies, Flapjack, Marsbars, Bananas and Soup pre-race. Any worry of bonking had surely been well and truly banished by such consumption.
The race started at a frantic pace. The course was a short lap, followed by two longer laps, totalling a distance of just over 6km. The short lap was simply a run round a cricket pitch, so as you can imagine very flat but the race began to take shape and the field spread out. I set off steady with the intention to pull through and so was quite far back, possibly in the late 20's after the short lap. The first long lap was where the race began for me. I picked runners off one by one and worked my way into 11th by the end of the first long lap, still feeling very strong indeed. I pushed on further and by the killer of climb on the 2nd lap, which hadn't caused too much pain on the first long, had climbed into 5th. All I had to do was hang on but the long finish found me wanting. Ironically, I was reeling the man in 4th in but the two lads behind flew past, leaving me to finish 7th.
7th out of a field of 50 was a brilliant result for me; underage and running against stronger lads who, in some cases, may have even had 2 years on me! I was disappointed not to hang onto 5th but the two who passed me deserved their placings for their 'kamikaze' style finish. Up front, Billy Pinder eased to victory by 15 seconds whilst behind me, Alex Sinclair fought hard for 9th and Will Crisp 11th, giving us Team Gold. Unfortunatley, we couldn't retain our overall School title, which went to Lancaster this time. Always next year though!
I intended on going to Cautley tomorrow but I suspect I will be feeling the effects of today. So call me soft or sly but, whilst I am going for a nice steady trot tomorrow, I will be thinking of all the Wharfedalers burning out their lungs on the Howgill Fells!