Lots of obstacle races claim to be the toughest thing out there. Do you think that’s true? There is a place for obstacles races. Tough Mudder, for instance, laudably promotes teamwork over the individual, and raises millions of pounds for charity. It is the rhetoric that is laughable. At the south west Tough Mudder, ‘you…
Tag: cross country
The Grand National: England’s greatest cross country race
The year is 1876. Queen Victoria is ruling an empire; Benjamin Disraeli is her Prime Minister; Thomas Edison is seeking a patent for the telephone. At Buckhurst Hill in Epping Forest, 32 men gather at a pub, The Bald-Faced Stag, for the All England Cross Country Championship. It is mid-November and it is raining. South…
Coming to a muddy field or park near you, cross country is back
It is New Year’s Day. I am trudging across an open field, decorated with wind-harassed red and white tape. The ground has slid away; the floor is a molten conveyor belt of liquidised mud. It writhes beneath the slap of ineffectual spikes. I am 15. I think I am in love. Love has brought me…
Mud, mud, glorious mud: the 2014 South of England cross country championship
Parliament Hill on the day of the South of England cross country championship. Our warm-up has been broken by a stream of women racers crossing the path ahead. We pause to watch the gritty, multi-coloured procession. After negotiating the path, the women descend slightly into a hollow of sludge of unknown depths. At the centre…
The rough and tumble of the Surrey League
This time last week I was bathing in the glory of being able to say: ‘I actually won something.’ Much can change in a week. It is no disrespect to the Broadway Tower Marathon to say Surrey League cross-country races are running on an utterly different level. They are not as muddy, hilly or long;…
South of England Cross Country Championships 2012
The South of England Cross Country Championships – the ‘southerns’ – is a January barometer of fitness and fight, a race in which the weak of spirit can find themselves painfully exposed. South of England, in a running context, means everything below an imaginary line drawn between Bristol and The Wash. That swathe of England…
January – a month of mileage
Marathon training continues apace; the prospect of a comfortable sub-three hour time becoming ever likelier. I covered 235 miles in January, which included weeks of 45, 49, 55 and 59 miles. The pattern was not deliberate. The month culminated with the South of England cross country championships, a nine-mile battle of attrition and mud around…
Heights of Madness 