When I saw the weather forecast for the weekend I remained somewhat sceptical that the event would ever take place at Cardiff on the 9th December. Neale and I together with the brown dog travelled down on the Friday night to enjoy a weekend of shopping and walks but when we arrived at the hotel we were greeted by 80mph winds and flooding.....
The event itself was held at the Llandaff fields and the were several hundred athletes drawn from the various age categories and from all of the regions. I was selected to run in the Welsh Masters and the North Wales regional team. I expected to see a few familiar faces and was pleased to see Marilyn Kitchen, Ali Whitelaw, Angie (Abergele). I wasn't so pleased to see Anne Thomas (Trotts) who beat me decicively at Belfast.
The course was incredibly slippery and I elected to wear my recently purchase spikes and Neale changed the stud length to 12mm (a good decision in the circumstances) The course over 5.5km was three laps of a flat circuit and as the gun went I immediately settled into 5th place. Anne took the lead followed by two team mates and Marilyn held back comfortably in 4th. By the end of the 1st lap Marilyn managed to claw Anne's lead of 60mts back and Id managed to se
ttle into 3rd. By the end of lap two Marilyn had eaked out a lead of about 80mts and I managed to pass Anne and gained about 50mts.
ttle into 3rd. By the end of lap two Marilyn had eaked out a lead of about 80mts and I managed to pass Anne and gained about 50mts. The last lap was hard...very hard..I continued to creep on Marilyn but couldn't cut the gap to less than 50 mts and in the meantime despite having a lead of 5omts over Anne on the start of the lap, I was aware she was kicking for home. For probably the 1st time in my life I kicked a little and managed to come home in 2nd place....I was over the moon.
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