It happened right around the top of the hill.
More specifically, it happened as I puffed, chugged, panted and more or less crawled my way to the highest point of South Parks during the third and final lap of a six-mile cuppers race held by the Oxford University Cross Country Club.
“It” refers to the claiming of first prize by team veteran Tom Frith of St. Anne’s, who launched a field-decimating move at the base of the aforementioned hill on the course’s second lap to capture his second straight Michaelmas cuppers victory in a blazing 33:05. That made him 37 seconds faster than University College fresher William Christofi, who came in a further 17 seconds ahead of Worcester’s Adam Speake to round out the top three.
Nearly seven full minutes had elapsed since Frith’s victory by the time I stumbled my muddy way across the line in an uninspiring 29th. By that point, Oxford’s third-best finisher in last year’s Varsity Match had had plenty of time to consider his thoughts on the race.
“For the first lap there was a big group of us, and I think it was quite slow for everyone,” remarked Frith afterward, referring to a lead pack of nine that slowly split away from the main field early in the competition. “And that was the strategy for me: just to sit in and see how the race went, and if I felt good, kick away on one of the hills and really put a good sustained effort in and see if I could break away from them.”
Break away he did. So devastating was Frith’s attack that it eventually shattered the early front-running group; by the race’s end, more than three minutes separated first and ninth place.
The early slowness of pace—which saw the whole of the men’s field stick together in a rather uneasy manner for the race’s first 400 meters—was perhaps attributable to the newness of the course. Cuppers are normally held on the more or less flat grounds of Port Meadow, but this year’s shift to South Parks meant that the whole route, save for a couple sweeping turns was literally an up-and-down affair.
While this factor, in addition to occasional patches of slippery turf that made some downhill stretches slightly treacherous, may have slowed down the runners’ times somewhat in comparison to last year, Frith was satisfied the change of scenery.
“It was a very good race to mimic the varsity course,” opined Frith, referring to Wimbledon Common, where the 123rd Gentleman’s Race with Cambridge will take place on Saturday of 8th week.
Cross country captain Naomi Webber echoed Frith’s sentiments on the change of course. “I thought the new course worked really well and was a really good test of the strength of this year’s athletes,” said Webber.
On the women’s side, the race broke up much more quickly, with a core of three to five runners leading the race from start to finish. A steady final kick during the race’s last uphill portion was enough for Trinity’s Claire McIlvennie to snatch a three-second victory from Sophia Saller of St. Catherine’s with a time of 25:55 for two laps. Joanna Klaptocz of St. Hugh’s was a further four seconds adrift in third.
For McIlvennie, who attended Middlebury College in the U.S. as an undergraduate is now an MSc student in Geography, the race was her first on English soil. Still, she was quickly impressed by the sense of team spirit that pervaded Saturday’s competition.
“I felt like the lead group worked together quite a bit, especially on the first lap,” said McIlvennie afterwards. “Knowing that there was such a tight group definitely kept me motivated, especially coming up the hill in South Parks on the second loop. Having other runners to work with always makes a race more exciting.”
“It would be an amazing experience to run in the Varsity match at the end of the season,” McIlvennie added. “This was a great step in that direction.”
In the team competition, St Catherine’s claimed victory by 46 points over Lady Margaret Hall on the women’s side, while Worcester more than doubled up St. Edmund’s Hall to earn the men’s prize.
But as was the case with last week’s Athletics cuppers, the real race has yet to be run.
“Last year we lost a lot of good runners, but it’s reassuring to see we’ve got a lot of good freshers,” concluded Frith. “I was really pleased with the show today.”
