English Schools XC Championships – 20 March 2010

Ryan Walbridge reports.

I was lucky to be the only person from Wimborne AC to go and represent Dorset in the English Schools Cross-Country Championship.

We had a very dismal day and a very early start as the minibus was leaving at six o’clock. I was picked to do the Manchester race after I did the race in South West Schools Cross-Country Championships at Truro. I had to be at the front car park at Q.E for 5:30 because the bus was leaving at six. Unfortunately we got held up at a bad crash just after Birmingham involving three cars and a lorry. It was a very worrying and boring time as we thought that we would miss our race and we were stuck for 45 minutes in the traffic.

Luckily we got to the race at 12:00, but did not have time to walk the course. It was still raining when we got there and that made everywhere very muddy and the mud round the track was worse than Parliament Hill.  There was a hill that went up, leveled off, then went back up again and there were people on their hands and knees trying to get up it. I went to the start 12:45 for my race, which started at 1:00, but before we could go and do the run they had to get a girl of the course who had been knocked unconscious. My race was 4k and I did that in 14mins 2sec and came 183 out of 326.

We were lucky because one of my friends was also running and we managed to get a lift home early. I arrived home at 7:30. I’m looking forward to the season next year.

Ryan