Canicross Bracknell report
I did the Bracknell Canicross race last Sunday.
After a fantastic run on Friday, Tango just didn’t get the hang of Canicross. I think he was quite nervous at the start with about 30 dogs around him, many of them barking and snarling. He is deaf in one ear so can’t tell where the sounds are coming from so I think it confused him a lot. He did make friends with a few dogs until I dragged him away to the start. On “Go”, we didn’t go as fast as Sparkie did last year. Last year I remember Sparkie sprinting for the first k. Tango jogged.
We went past someone on the top of the first hill. Then he ran next to me trying to jump up and get attention like he does sometimes. I stopped patted him and we carried on. Someone with a husky ran past us. Then a couple of minutes later he jumped up again, and we stopped again before we carried on again. Not a good start. A bit later we caught up with four or five runners and there was a little bit of fighting going on between the husky that overtook us and another one. The one that overtook us was pulled over to the right a bit straight towards Tango. The husky went for him a bit and Tango turned round, growled and barked assertively and then we carried on past the husky – not seeing him again.
After about 2k there was a downhill and Tango decided to pull hard down it. I ran very, very fast. After a few hundred metres the downhill had gone and Tango was back to slow trotting to the front/side of me. I always held the lead to stop it going too dangly. We passed a few more people but he then stopped for a wee so we got re-overtaken. Then we got to a long path with a lot of puddles in. He slowed down going through each of the puddles, as if trying to decide whether they were clean enough to drink but deciding not to. A few more people overtook us, especially when he stopped for another wee.
Overall, we did it in 22 mins 31s. The results say that it was 5k but I was working really hard (with little help from Tango) and so I would say it was around 5.4k. This is what last year’s results say it was. We came 7th out of 15th in the age group. A pretty poor result. But 16th out of 106th overall. That definitely sounds better.
I am planning to do another in January at Alice Holt.