I arrive at the Belvoir Golf Course, just before Kangaroo Flat in Bendigo at 12:45pm, 15 minutes later than I wanted. Cameron's race is at 1.30pm and he likes a hour preparation, but...
I had a full car load today for the trip, 4 open men & 1 U20, a fair chunk of the team!!! & all of Western A's registration numbers...
After a bit of Team admin, I go off for a 4km warm up on the course, investigating the 3k leg and checking out most of the 2km section as well. An undulating course with more ups and a couple of severe downs, very hard under foot, a testing course.
I watch some of the junior's races, mainly when they pass the start finish. The women have a 6k race prior to us and we have 3 girls debuting for the season, one who will lead the crew (finished 30th overall) and a new lady who finished mid pack and a sprinter who is still trying to work out how she ended up here!!! ;-)
The race starts at 2:55pm (10 min delay, was to start 2:45), we start pointing down the hill, its very dry and for the first 500-750m there is a cloud of dust above the athletes, very hard to breathe. Spectators tell me it looked very amusing, 331 participants. The course is 1x2k leg and then 2x3km legs, my splits were: 3:51, 4:12, 4:04, 4:14, 4:41, 4:18, 4:29, 4:43 (I have bold the first 1km splits, to compare). Whilst it looks like I went to fast early, I don't think this could be helped, jostling for position and going down a big hill. Overall time of 34 min & 35 sec, this is a PB of 3m 55s from previous 8km x-country races. Whilst I do recognise every cross country course is hard to compare, I would rank this as a hard one, so I'll take the PB!!! :-)
I think the Western A teams have gone well, and I am predicting a Top 3 for all of the men & for the first women's team, here's hoping!
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