County Cross Country Championships

Woke Sunday & felt like turning over & going back to sleep. Not good. I shook it off & got up & went through my usual raceday routine of some light stretching followed by breakfast of a large bowl of porridge with banana mashed in & about 6 slices of wholemeal toast washed down with coffee & water. It certainly didn't feel like the day for which I'd been waiting for the last six months. Was a bit late setting off for Clonakilty but made pretty good time so was there about 90minutes before the off. After exchanging pleasantries with some of my clubmates & other people I knew we set off to walk a lap of the course. The 30mm of rain that had been forecast to fall overnight was evident & just in case this didn't make things wet enough there was a stream that had to be traversed twice per lap. The course climbed gradually to high point before losing all the elevation in a steepish downhill. I liked it as a course and was glad I had gone with the long spikes.
So onto the race: as we started on a slope situated on a bend I positioned myself at the outside effectively giving me a more gradual climb than the very inside. Started fast & found myself in 3rd postition after 100m or so. I relaxed a little and settled in around 6th for the first lap. With 2 clubmates ahead of me & a 3rd & 4th to pass me as we entered the 2nd lap I found myself in 5th place (8th overall) and with 4 to score out of the medals should we win. I hung in for the next lap or so but found the gap opening as the race wore on. As the laps progressed I was passed by 4 other runners but I managed to stay on the shoulder of the last guy to pass & got away from him on the last lap. Ended up in 11th and bitterly dissappointed not to medal but on the day it was a bridge too far.
Went out & got Royally p!ssed Sunday night as I felt I needed to blow off some steam afterwards. When looking back at the stats for the race on my Garmin afterwards I noticed my Avg. HR was quite low (170) for the race. Maybe this was because negotiating the mud was tricker than the effort available but I don't think so.
Managed to drag myself out for 8 miles monday even though I felt awful. Was planning a session on tuesday but still fet a bit crappy but as soon as I got going I managed 14x400m in around 72 which was grand. Just an easy 7 on wednesday.