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The XC thread

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Curly45 25 Feb 7:37am, 25 Feb 2025 5,000 posts	Quote Pin Curly45 Wow that's some bad design if they fall to bits. I've not gone for super shoes yet for spikes as I'm not competing enough to need it. The league that bans fast runners sounds a bit weird. Not sure that's fair. I've beaten sub 38 runners on the cross, but never got anywhere near on the road so that sort of league would be good for me though 😂
SPR 25 Feb 8:39am, 25 Feb 2025 47,144 posts	Quote Pin SPR Heard the national was ridiculously muddy and knee deep at points. Glad the year I did it was atypical (2023) as that would have been tough. That's a new one @Alun Funnily enough I haven't heard of people destroying the standard spikes and people use those quite a lot. I imagine that failure would happen on the standard spikes though. I wonder whether there will be a Dragonfly XC 2 at some point.
larkim 25 Feb 8:42am, 25 Feb 2025 26,717 posts	Quote Pin larkim Fast runners banned from a league? Wow, that's unusual! The NE league that my son has raced in has a "handicap" start which I'd not seen elsewhere before - the races start in 3 packs; slow, medium and fast, and runners are moved up the "pack" if they perform well etc. then League scoring I think is done on position across the line, whereas individual scoring is done on absolute racing time (I think). Seems to work, and allows the fast racers alongside the slower ones.
Chrisity 25 Feb 2:22pm, 25 Feb 2025 25,886 posts	Quote Pin Chrisity @Alun Parliament Hill looked far muddier than Wollaton 2020, but not as wet.
stilldreaming 25 Feb 2:23pm, 25 Feb 2025 1,535 posts	Quote Pin stilldreaming The league our club used to run in was talking about introducing a 10 minute mile restriction which heartily pissed off the older slower guys, many of whom had supported the league for years. I don't know if it was introduced as our club moved to a less competitive league with more local races.
Dustin 25 Feb 3:57pm, 25 Feb 2025 208 posts	Quote Pin Dustin Ha, Oh yes I remember Woolaton in 2020 (check profile pic...) Definitely wetter as Chrisity says, but there was a lot of it runnable. I was - I think - 10 minutes quicker then than I was on Saturday. We compete in 2 XC leagues. Saturday is the county one which has a much higher standard. The Sunday league, like Alun's also has a speed restriction (excludes faster runners), with it being 5.30/mile pace for men or 6.00/mile pace for women over 5 miles/10k in the previous 12 months. To be fair, the faster guys use it a as a badge of honour to be ineligible. This is more a social league so the opposite of stilldreaming's league restriction to actually encourage slower club runners to compete. XC spikes last me at best the whole winter. With my fat feet , the sides usually split about this time of year....
Alun 25 Feb 11:38pm, 25 Feb 2025 222 posts	Quote Pin Alun My first three pairs of Dragonfly XCs were all warranty refunds because of rotated spike sockets under the balls of my feet (and plenty of other runners that I know had the same issue). The damage to these ones was probably the result of being caught on the back edge of the full length spike plate and ripping it away from the upper layer of zoomx... The lower league is the descendant of the former "Today's Runner" league from the 1990s (??), from the sound of it there are a few left around the country. I was at Woolaton Park in 2020, that was very wet underfoot but had long stretches of good ground, the run into the finish was ridiculously tough though.