Cold and muddy cross-country exists outside running's fads and fashions

Cross-country is an effective part of winter training, but with thousands of pitfalls to negotiate in every race, it’s more than just a means to an end

It’s a bright, warm afternoon in October, and the starter’s gun has just gone off. Over 200 of us have set off down the slope and are on our way, twice around an undulating course of soft, occasionally boggy, ground. It is the first leg of the senior men’s race at the Saucony English Cross Country Relays in Mansfield, and the standard at the front is frighteningly high; some of these runners will be hoping to qualify for the GB team for the European Cross Country Championship.

I have no such concerns. All I need to worry about is doing as well as I can. Everything else is a bonus: the good weather, the perfect conditions, the chance to run alongside some of the best runners in England (briefly), and that fleeting sensation of knowing that I am exactly where I want to be, doing exactly what I ought to be doing: running cross-country.