We had our last cross-country race on Saturday. This season has been a bit of a bust for me and the last race did not break the bad run. I never really managed to throw off my previous cold completely and now I’m down with another one. The course was a shocker with two hilly laps. Of course, the hills are on the back end of the laps with the race to the finish line up a steep, very uneven hill. It was enough to trigger flashbacks to school cross country.

At our school, inter-house swimming, athletics and cross-country days were compulsory. For cross-country that meant everyone had to complete the course but there were always a bunch of girls who walked all the way. The course must have been about three kilometres. We ran out the back gate, did a big lap of the block our school was on, past my old primary school, then in the car park gate, past the boarding house, down through the bush to the farm, u-turn up the dirt road and back up a steep hill to the tennis courts and on to the oval to finish. I was not a runner, but I must have had some fitness from playing tennis and for a couple of years I finished in the top fifteen in my division which landed me in the school team. I don’t remember much about the races apart from two particular ones which both had one thing in common. Horrendous hills.

The first was in Churchhill National Park, and the way I remember it, the course basically followed a muddy fire trail that went straight up one side of the hill and back down the other. I’m guessing there must have been more to the course than this but this is all I can remember. What sticks in my mind is plodding up this endless hill with all the actual runners quickly disappearing in front of me. Funnily enough, our club has a race at Churchill National Park each year but I have not yet ventured out. I just happened to have other commitments on those days.

The other school cross country was at Wattle Park. Once again, lots of hills. I think I ended up about 65th out of 100 runners that day. This was the race that I decided, no more cross country for me. From that year on I managed to finish just out of the top fifteen. Funnily enough, our last house was only a couple of kilometres from Wattle Park, so I used to jog down and do threshold hills down there. How times change. My teenage self would have laughed at the thought of going out voluntarily to train on those hills.

Fast forward to 2019 and I was back running a cross-country season. With our club, you can run in Athletics Victoria races and APSOC races but I choose to only do APSOC. Athletics Victoria is much too serious for me. APSOC races are much more social, have a bigger spread of running ability and have afternoon tea afterwards. To run you must be a member of one of the affiliated clubs and you pay a flat fee to run as many of the twelve races as you want. There are a variety of distances up to half-marathon, across different terrains, including a partial beach run. There are also two relays, with one of them where each runner runs twice. I’ve found doing the cross country season certainly improves my running … well it would if I could stop getting sick. Frequent racing in a fairly low-stakes environment gives plenty of practice in racing. Also because I am not a top runner my team doesn’t need my time to go toward premiership points. This means sometimes I just have a relaxed run around the course depending on how I’m feeling on the day, and enjoy the social aspect.

Did you run cross country in school or have compulsory inter-house sports at school? Have you picked up something as an adult that would surprise teenage you?