Cross national du Limoges, also known as a mud bath

Knowing that one of the main purposes of joining Montlucon Athletisme is practicing my French, I willsay this: If I knew how to swear properly in French, I would have gotten in a lot more French practice today.

That said, I'll start at the beginning of the story. Pascal picked me up just before 10 and we met everyone else at the Hippodrome. Cecile wasn't coming because she had to study, he explained, so Stephanie and I were the only senior women racing.

The drive to Limoges took about and hour and a half. I slept part of the way because I was a little tired from having gone out for a couple hours the night before. It had been raining all morning, and it rained all the way up until when Stephanie and I began our warmup.

My spikes are still back in Ohio, but Christian managed to convince some random person to loan me a pair. I was a little nervous since my own spikes usually tear my feet up and leave them feeling bruised, but they were actually fairly comfortable.

The senior women's long course race was one of the last, so because of the rain and hundreds of pairs of spikes, the course was really sloppy by the time our race started. Parts of it were ankle-deep in thick mud, other parts were flooded, and the back loop was stone. In addition, the start was downhill, with an immediate right turn and followed by a few more curves before a series of three hairpin turns in a (flooded) gravel parking lot that we repeated four times. Clearly this was not a course to run an all-time PR!

As usual, I started in the back of the pack, careful to stay on my feet down the first hill, around the corner (I slid) and through the first mud pit. I gradually moved up through the field, and on one of the loops I could see the leaders - a Kenyan woman followed by three others (Russians, according to Christian, as I found out later) and then Stephanie in fifth.

After an out and back portion on the side of a hill we ran through the gravel parking lot with the three hairpin turns, up a hill and into the woods. Then we repeated that loop before, um, repeating it again with a longer portion added on.

The cadettes (14-15 years old) were running in our race up until that point and when they turned off to finish I could see that I was all alone in ninth place, about 100m behind two women and that 10th place was a good 300m behind me. I couldn't help but think that it was unlikely that I could move up nor that the girl behind me could catch me. This was also about the time it started to rain again. Needless to say, I didn't really have the best attitude at this point.

We repeated the large loop again, with the mud splashing all the way up to my waist. There were several times I slide several feet and I nearly lost a shoe in the muck, but I managed to make it to the finish with both spikes and without falling, which was a huge vistory in itself.

When I got back to our little team camp, I realized the temperature had dropped since the race had begun. My fingers were cold and it was difficult to pull my tights on over my muddy legs. Then it started to hail.

We watched the cadets (14-15 year old boys) race before heading for home. They took 1st, 2nd and 4th in that race. The men ran 1st, 3rd and 5th in the short course and the two cadettes had taken 2nd and 3rd. Along with my 9th and Stephanie's 5th place finish, it was a good day for Montlucon Athletisme.

I race again in two weeks in Moulins, which will be my first race within our region. The Championnats d'Allier are in January after winter vacation so that will be a good motivation to run at least a little while I travel!