Hi all, this piece is about my time at the Interand selection race at Mytchett

On Friday, after school dad picked me up so that we could drive 6 hours down south to the final interland selection race. In the previous race I came 2nd so I just needed to finish well to make the England team for interland next February. On the way down I was hoping I did well, since otherwise we would have travelled 6 hours for nothing! Anyway 6 hours later we arrived at my aunties house where we were to spend the night. This was quite handy since the event was only a 15 min drive from her front door (including dad getting taking a wrong turn in fleet). On the start line I was surprisingly calm and not nervous at all; I think that this was since I knew that I could do well it was just whether I could get my brain in the right frame of mind to race. Which I did manage. First control was fine if not a bit too far to the left, then the second control came fine with no mistake; by the time I had got to the fourth control without a big mistake I was starting to feel confident and that I was getting in my groove (if thats how you would describe racing??). Some of the controls were very interesting; they were in army trenches which I at first look at the map, I thought was an index contour line! About halfway round I caught Dad up for 12 mins which really boosted my confidence and helped me realise that I was having a good run. Then about 3/4 of the way round I started to get tired and I knew that this was when I could make a costly mistake. So to combat this I slowed down a little bit, to make sure that I didn't make a mistake. This is something that I haven't done before, and I think that it really helped me to finish the course without any mistake, definately something that I will use when racing in the future. going from 16 to 17 I could see Jack Leitch in the distance ( he's a top year 16 and ran for england at this years JHIs), this motivated me and I sped back up to a very fast pace. I was really just chasing him for the rest of the course, but I just couldn't overtake him!! He was too fast. I had only caught him up for 4 mins because he made a 3 min mistake. Then at the end things got really heated and we had a sprint finish, which I lost because I could see the finish flag, but I couldn't see the finish control!! So I ended up running into some brambles, not very clever! Overall I think that the area was a very nice bit of woodland with some technical sections but never anything too challenging since there were paths everywhere! It was almost worth the 12 hours spend travelling! I should have made the England team but we will have to wait and see what the final decision is.

Alastair