A golden start for Amelia

Amelia Chrispin

On Saturday Amelia made the short journey to Prestwold Hall to represent the  Nottinghamshire U13G team in the UK CAU Inter-Counties XC Championships.This is  the highest quality race, for her age group in the XC Season, with runners from Scotland all the way down to Cornwall taking part. Amelia was at the bottom end of this age group this year. 

The Nottinghamshire Team had a great pen draw, being in the middle of the start line. Amelia had a great start and was in the top 60 or so heading into the first corner, unfortunately around 20 of the girls directly in front of her all fell over together screaming and rolling around in the mud! This caused Amelia and a few of the other runners to come to a grinding halt with the rest of the field steaming by. She manged to get past uninjured but at this stage was near the back of the 340+ field.

She reacted well and raced as hard as she could for the remainder of the race, although at one point another girl fell in front of her, sliding down a hill on her tummy and Amelia had to practice her hurdling! After a hard run she crossed the line in a creditable 159 place out of the 304 that finished. In her usual manner she beamed her big smile and used the age old phrase 'well that's racing!' 

Less than 24hrs later, Amelia was back in her own age group, lining up excitedly on the start line, in her first race of the 2017 Triathlon season. This was the Bedford Junior Duathlon and part of the East Region Triathlon Series. As the East Midlands Series has not started yet Amelia wanted to use this as a warm up race, before the official start of her own series, and to test herself against another region.

The race was to be a testing  1600m run/5600m bike/1200m run course. Amelia had a great first run leg entering transition for the first time leading the race by 20 seconds. She quickly put on her helmet and mounted her bike and headed out to start the bike course. She had and great bike section extending her lead to 45 seconds as she entered transition for the final time.  After dropping off her bike she headed onto the run course for the final 1200m of the race. Realising she was never going to be caught she eased off the pace crossing the line in 21min 12sec, nearly a minute ahead of her nearest rival. She was shortly afterward presented with the first place trophy. A great season opener.