Ruffs Dog Blog..: Mugdock CaniX

After last weekend, I wont lie, I ached. 3 runs including two 6km ones of hills and mud over “one of CaniXs most challenging courses” (said by Richard himself) probably isn’t the best way to break yourself back into running, lol. But throwing myself in at the deep end is usually my style and it was great fun. My lack of fitness and training showed but my enthusiasm and love for CaniX had been reignited. I was already excited for the following weekend at Mugdock Country Park.

We travelled up to Dumbarton, near Glasgow, on Friday afternoon ready for the weekends racing. It rained and rained again overnight and the start area was already squelchy so it was fairly obvious it was going to be a seriously muddy course. Due to the narrow start we set off at interval starts. The Xtreme females were the last group to be set off. I was behind Karen and her two collies with Emily behind me. The inov8s and seal skins were a god send. How I didn’t fall over I don’t know but Blaze loved the mud and loved being behind Karens collies. It was a much faster course than last week, it was only 5km and had a couple of short inclines but on the whole the mud was the biggest obstacle..well, that and keeping the spanners out of the water! We managed to finish in 28:50.62 which although was 3rd (and last) in my category wasn’t too bad looking at the overall female results. Karen won our category on 26:47.28 with Emily less than half a second behind her. The winning 1 dog female did it in 29:00.08.

Sunday was a drier day and we were actually welcomed on arrival by sun!.The ground underfoot was still muddy but more sticky than the squelchy it had been the previous day. We were drawn to start last of the Xtreme females, which last season was my favourite place to start but for some reason on Sunday, for whatever reason, didn’t like it. I really enjoyed the first half of the course but for whatever reason we didn’t seem to be working as well as a team. Rex has a certain speed he likes me to run at and under that speed he just trots along without pulling, which is what he did for most of the course unless we were going downhill. There were also a lot more public about. I have no problem with this, but I just wish they were as courteous about sharing the tracks as we were. On several occasions we got joined by off-lead dogs and once a child even came running up (which his parents found amusing and just laughed!). As a result we finished with a slightly slower time of 30:15.62 but on the plus side I felt so much better than the previous week.

On Monday I even took the dogs out for a 5.5km run around Shouldham. Si took Rex on the bike and I ran with Pip, Diesel and Blaze, with Inca off lead. I want to start alternating which dogs run with me.

We’re at Fineshades this coming weekend so hopefully we can put in a better performance then. My fitness is definitely improving.