Selected for stuff and the start of the cross country season

Selections

I have been selected for the South Africa camp in February with the GB team, and I have also been pre-selected for the Nordic Champs in March. Full selections are as follows

South Africa
Helen Bridle, Rachael Elder, Mhairi Mackenzie, Alison O’Neil, Pippa Whitehouse, David Brickhill-Jones, Oleg Cheplin, Matt Crane, Jon Duncan, Scott Fraser, Graham Gristwood, Matthew Speake & Jamie Stevenson

Nordics Championships
Jon Duncan, Graham Gristwood, Jamie Stevenson and Helen Bridle (further athletes will be added

Cross Country

My cross country season started at the weekend (having missed the first races due to the mountain marathon). On Saturday I ran in the Warwick Relays, teams of 4, 3.3km per leg. I ran first leg for my running club, Kenilworth Runners, and I also ran last leg for a mixed team with Liis and some friends from university. I was running well (the best I have felt in a hard session since the OMM), but my downfall was my choice of footwear. I didn't wear spikes and regretted it, sliding all over the place. On the firmer ground though I was strong and I almost managed to come back first (3 seconds behind Alistair Smith). My team finished 3rd and the mixed team won that category. Results here.
On Sunday we had a house trip down to the 'Cardiac Arrest', an 8 mile extreme cross country race. This basically meant they took us through quarries, over big piles of rocks, through small tunnels and in and out of a number of rivers and ponds (see this great pic of Liis).
I won the race, Harold was 2nd and Matt was 3rd. Liis was 3rd girl and we won the team prize, so basically we came away with almost everything. Results here. Report by Matt and some pics here.