On Saturday in Indiana, Kate Avery became the first British athlete for 25 years to win a national US college cross-country championships, on a course looking suspiciously dry underfoot. Back home, our fields of sporting dreams have turned to mud. Emily, my daughter, is into running, and the athletics meets of summer are memories now: long afternoons at perfect, fearsome tracks, the glee and heartbreak, the sunshine and warm breezes.
On Saturday she ran a cross-country in Keighley. As each shivering child looked at the course, their faces fell. “That’s a massive hill,” Emily moaned, and it was hard to say anything encouraging that maintained a relationship with the truth. The mud was already slippery, and between the hill and a winding torture trail at the bottom it was churned ankle deep and cloying.
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