Innisfree Wheelers

British & Irish Masters Cross Country held in Perry park Birmingham Saturday 14th November 2009.

Innisfree Wheelers member Pam Benson was second individual in Women's over 65 and the Irish team were also second in this category. Congratulations to Pam once again from all her club-mates. What an example she is setting to us younger members!

Report By: Lucy D’Arcy (member of the Irish team)

Saturday morning 9:30am, cold, wet (but not raining at the moment) & not too windy, not a bad 1st impression of the day ahead, oh but were we in for a treat. The coach arrived to bring us off to Perry Park, a short 30mins from the hotel, nobody was in a hurry to get off the bus when we arrived, way too cold, and the races weren't starting until 12pm, sure what’s the rush.

The time whizzed by, a few team photos and a few slushy warm-up laps later and it was time for the off. Mean-while the wind had rapidly picked up & it got a lot colder, time to get the trackies off, 6 tough kilometres ahead of us, no going back now. Cold but dry we were on the start line, gun goes off and so do we, head-long into the wind, round 1 corner, round another and up along the trees, if your feet weren't wet before the race they sure were now, along the water-logged tree-lined stretch but in our favour the strong wind was behind us at this point (but that didn’t last long), up a short, sharp, muddy hill to head off around the lake on a carpet of leaves, nice (on the 1st lap anyway), through another bit of muck, up another longer hill, this time into the wind, across the top and a slippy downhill followed by a sharp right hand bend, along some more trees followed by a decent downhill stretch only to be hit with a savage uphill climb into the wind again. This marked the end of the 1st lap, this was also the finish line at the end of our 3rd lap.

The 2nd and 3rd laps were even worse as we had driving rain and worsening underfoot conditions to contend with as well as the wind but we survived to tell the tail. All I can say is that we were lucky to be the 1st race out and not the last.