BACK AT IT 
PARBOLD HILL RACE
After managing to string together four weeks of consistent training, the acid test would have to be a race. Parbold Hill was long since booked in and has been a date on the calendar that I had been eyeing in which to get my ass back in to some sort of gear. Parbold Hill precedes the English Cross Country Championships the following week and so would also serve as a sharpener for that one. Given my twenty-five showings at the Harrock Hill races over the years, which are like little Summer series sisters to this annual Parbold race that covers much of the same course but more, it's a weird one that this was my first appearance at the bigger brother. Probably work or just a lack of planning to pick this race out would be reasons why it's gone amiss over the years, but this time I was under instruction to enter as it's an important race in my new club's short history - so a suitable excuse I thought - it was about time I got a Parbold Hill under my belt.
This is a mutli-terrain affair with some road sections, fields and tracks. But the off-road sections were particularly cut up with all the wet weather this Winter. Fast Summer trails in Summer's Harrock Hill Series were unrecognisable muddy swamps here in wet February. However race day itself saw the sun come out.
I didn't really know what to expect from this race, but I was fairly confident that any sort of capitulation like my last outing at the Lancs Cross Country was highly unlikely. I went out steady, knowing more or less the route of the first half of the race and started to pick my way past a few. The main climb is a tarmac one to the top of Parbold Hill itself and I'd decided from off there I was going to invest some more serious effort and put a proper shift in. There was the risk of blowing up, but I felt stronger than that as I continued to pick a few more runners off. Since early on in these Parbold proceedings, only one competitor managed to pass me and that was club mate and last year's ladies winner Louisa Powell-Smith. I knew she was pressuring behind for some time as I recognised the breathing noises from Tuesday night training sessions. About two miles to go, at this point I picked up speed to leap the cattle grid behind High Moor Restaurant that I have leapt many a time, hoping it would psych her out! It turned out Louisa was suitably impressed, but it couldn't camouflage her superior leg speed as she soon enough surged past just before the final climb of note. I wonder if I should have dug deeper to go with her because, post-surge, there wasn't that much between us after that, making twenty seconds on me to the finish. But tagging on to Louisa would have been a risk. I had to run my own race. However I sense I'm not too far away from the sort of form where I can take chances like that and race with a little less caution. Overall I was fairly pleased with how this one panned out. The heart did flutter for a split second coming down off Harrock Hill in the closing stages. A couple of fences are made in to hurdles, banked up with bails of straw from which to project yourself. An over enthused approach, with a strong run up and one eye on Powell, nevertheless left a lazy trailing leg which clipped the top of the fence and almost sent me for a crash landing. But I somehow stayed on my feet and expressed apologies for my French, so to speak, to the small cluster of spectators.
It was nice to be in the prizes for a change as well as I got a bit of something as a counter in our winning men's team. Our Ribble Valley contingent swept almost everything up in fact. That's how it is with these guys.

Saturday 17th February 2018
48th PARBOLD HILL RACE, Hilldale, West Lancs.   6.75m
1st Man - Matthew Crehan (St Helens & Sutton) 41:59
1st Lady - Katie Walshaw (Ribble Valley) 46:58
My Stats - 48:47   16/442