Fineshades CaniX

It made a change this weekend to have a CaniX event under an hours drive from our house. This one day event was held at Fineshades in Corby and I entered Rex and Baze (although I really couldn’t remember who I’d entered). It was a 5.4km course on a mix of off road track, grassy trails and woodland paths.

Thankfully I was more prepared for the interval starts. It was quite a narrow start and I was at the back of the “Xtreame Women” (those running with 2 dogs). I much preferred this as I had extra incentive to catch people up. I’m terrible at running to my full potential as I get bored. I ran without my GPS watch today as I tend to get fixated with how far I have left, what pace I’m going at etc and I wanted to just enjoy it. It certainly seemed to help, although I knew there was a nasty hill near the end and every upwards incline I felt myself wondering if this was the end ; did I need to pace myself or could I use up my reserve and push on? One things for sure, I really don’t do hills. Where we live it really is as flat as a pancake.

I tried to let myself go a bit more today, especially on the downhill sections meaning that I could push on up the uphills. It seemed to work and the dogs ran better. Blaze always responds well to “Go go go” but Rex does seem to get a little bored & distracted when I can’t keep the pace up. Today I obviously ran better as he was focused right to the end. Also assisted by the fact that a couple of times we were behind people who were enthusiastically motivating their dogs which my two found very exciting.

As usual Rex was straight into the paddling pool at the end. He loves his water and was having a good old roll to make sure he got well and truly soaked. Blaze wasn’t quite so enthusiastic about the water. He loves ditches, rivers and the sea but really doesn’t understand this paddling pool lark.

So, we took the others for a walk and had a drink at the café before the presentations. We finished in a respectable 25:26.42 and in 2nd place for our category. The winner was 25:19.19 and 3rd was 26:05.60 so it was very close. I’m finally getting the hang of interval starts….but I need to be at the back ;-) I knew who I needed to catch up and the fact they could still be slightly ahead but their time would be slower. Competitive much lol

CaniX don’t give rosettes, instead they get prizes donated by their sponsors. Today for 2nd place we got a bag of CSJ food, a bag of Poppets and a bag of Dem Bones. We also got some Innerwolf goodies including a pot of paw wax.

Our next CaniX event is down in Bagshot in 2 weeks time. It’s a 2 day event and they told us today that the course is 7.4km (4.6 miles) rather than the usual 5km. I might need to rethink my teams as I’ve got Rex and Pip entered on Day 1 and Rex and Blaze entered on day 2…but I’m not convinced Rex will be as enthusiastic about running that far 2 days in a row. Being down in Surrey I’m pretty sure they’ll be hills and from the pictures it looks like we also run through a ford…help lol.