National XC - Alton Towers

I love XC, in fact I love XC so much we drove 150 miles on Saturday to take part in the National XC which this year took place at Alton Towers in Staffordshire. Anyone can take part in the National XC but often it just Gary and I who take part for NHRR. I like going as usually various members of my running mad family take part too and as they all live up North it's always nice to see them.
So, on to the race itself. The ladies race was 2 laps of a firm grassland with a huge, enourmous, great big mother of a hill at the far end of the lap. It was pretty steep to say the least, so steep in fact that it was almost impossible to get one foot in front of another with enough speed and forward motion that you were able to keep running. By the time I had crawled over the top (pictured) my heart was almost beating out of my chest and I was wheezing like crazy.
I didn't have my best run but I did ok finishing 498th out of 495 finishers. My sister did well, finishing in the top 200 but I am afraid I was beaten by my mother (by 4 minutes!) but after all she is the Lancashire LV60 XC champion so maybe that isn't too bad!
For the first time ever, I finished before the men's start (there is only 45 minutes difference and our course was meant to be 8k but I very much doubt that). The start of the men's national is really amazing, 1244 men sound like a herd of buffalo when they set off. Gazza did pretty well, finishing in 409th place. He was chuffed to beat my future brother in law by a few places too. My brother finished in 41st place (wow) but was really disappointed by the way he ran. This was helped a little by the fact that Leeds City won the men's race again (this is the third of fourth time recently, they are pretty good!)