sam and the city

It's so bad it's great

Good day faithful readers. If you know me at all you'll know that I'm very susceptible to advertising. It doesn't have to be the type you see on TV, it can just be someone raving about something that they have or something that they did. If they talk about it for long enough eventually I'll convince myself that yes, I absolutely cannot live any longer if I don't have whatever product it is that they're selling... either that or I'll come to hate it and never buy one of whatever it is as long as I live. It's a fine line they tread really.

Anyways, for the last month or so one of my work colleagues has been going on and on about the cross country season in England and how great it is. Specifically she kept telling me about this "hellrunner" event.

Now my impression of cross country has always been that it's exactly the same as normal road races except that it is run on trails. You might come across the odd puddle, but that is about as messy as it would get. Therefore they never really appealed to me, since they weren't bringing anything new to the table. If you have a look at the website though, you'll see that in UK cross country events at least, stepping in a puddle is going to be the least of your worries. This particular event is 16km and it run over a course used to test tanks by the army!

I'm not sure what exactly it says about the psychology of runners. Provide them with a nice flat, fast course and they might or might not to run on it. Fill it with mud and water and hills and everything else you can imagine to make it difficult and generally uncomfortable and it's a different story altogether. "So what you're saying is by the end not only will I be tired, but I'll be dirty, scratched up, wet and cold...hmmm, I like the sound of that".

Yep, running up and down sandy hills, slopping through mud, wading through waist deep "puddles", in the middle of November (ie. in temps probably around 5C)! As soon as I saw this I signed myself up. It's going to be cold, it's going to be uncomfortable and I can tell you right now that I'm going to love every minute of it! Didn't I tell you that I could be convinced that anything was good for me?

posted by sam @ 9:19 pm