An appreciation for cross-country running

I've been getting muddy. While I had run a cross-country race in 2022 and two in 2023, it has only been this season (Oct 2024 - March 2025) in which I have really started to appreciate the sport in its own right as opposed to it just being a different variation on running.

The Gwent League is the premier competition in the South Wales and Bristol region. Races take place across that region, although notably in the current season not actually in Gwent. It is a day long event with age group races taking place, ensuring a buzz of activity when you arrive. In one part of the field will be an encampment of club tents.

I missed the opening fixture at Pembrey Country Park because it clashed with a road 10k I was taking part in on the Wirral, but I did run in the second fixture at Llandaff Fields in Cardiff. In addition to this being a league fixture, it was also the opening round of the British Athletics UK Cross-Challenge series and a gold label World Athletics Cross-Country Tour event. This meant that elite runners were taken part alongside the masses, and I was very much at the slower end of the masses. It is difficult to think of many sports in which you can go from watching athletes compete in Olympic finals to starting alongside them. Even when there are elite runners in a road race, you applaud them from your pen much further back in the field but never really see them after the gun. With cross-country they pass by, just a lap ahead!

Prior to the third Gwent League fixture, I took part in a Gwent Leisure Centre League race hosted by the club I'm a member of, Lliswerry Runners. This took place in a storm. There were competitors slipping and sliding, including the eventual race winner who face-planted into a muddy puddle on his way to victory. While fraught while running, it was the kind of event that you leave with plenty of stories. The Leisure Centre league is a relatively smaller event contested between nine clubs in Gwent. The next Gwent League fixture was at Blaise Castle in Bristol, the third time I'd taken part in this race in three years.

While there were no Gwent League fixtures in January, there was the Welsh Cross Country Championships. Following some cajoling from Lliswerry Runners I entered, although in truth, even a few days beforehand I was unsure if I'd take part. I did not feel I was a good enough runner to be in something called the Welsh Championships. I was used to finishing towards the back of the field at Gwent League races, and feared I could become detached from a race at this level. I went for it and I finished 174th in a field of 193. Too close for comfort, but not left behind. Due in part to a quirk of how many teams were taking part, I unexpectedly (to the extent I had to ask for it to be explained to me) helped Lliswerry to an age group team bronze medal.

The league restarted in February although I missed that race at Margam Park, Port Talbot due to a cold. The final races of the Gwent League and Leisure Centre League seasons took place on successive weekends in March in Brecon, and Newport (hosted by Griffithstown Harriers) respectively. In each Gwent League fixture I took part in, I was the last finisher for my club. Nonetheless, those finishes all came with a sense of satisfaction.

In addition, to my own running I have taken a broader interest in cross-country watching broadcasts of the other legs of the Cross Challenge Series, English National Championships and European Championships. I am not sure I have necessarily picked up running tips for next season, but I've definitely added a depth to my understanding of the sport and that has built an enthusiasm for next season. I am already re-considering some of my running plans for late 2025.

There is a vibrancy around cross-country, although I do tend to find that this is lost midway through the race when I am asking myself why did I do this, but it always comes back in the last kilometre. It is an environment in which you witness elite performances from people with whom you shared a start-line. Sometimes, you get to see people who have performed well in local leagues demonstrate just how good they really are when they take on and very best in the country.

At the very highest level there is a debate as to whether cross-country should become an Olympic event, likely in the Winter Olympics. I hope the discipline has that opportunity.

The ocean and the doorstep: the need for a coordinated European strategic defence capability is not new, but it is urgent

"First of all, during the war, everybody has problems, even you. But you have a nice ocean and don’t feel [the problems] now. But you will feel it in the future." - Volodymyr Zelenskyy

I have had a draft post on the need for a coordinated European strategic defence capability as a work in progress for a little while. I must concede sometimes world events move more rapidly than my writing on geopolitics and the framing keeps shifting, even if the overarching message is a constant.

Few shifts in framing without a gun being fired are as dramatic as the meeting between President Zelenskyy and President Trump, with significant, if petulant, contributions from Vice President Vance. There was much to analyse from the exchange but I want to focus in on one specific line from President Zelenskyy which I think speaks to a far longer term issue than the relations between any two national leaders. In referencing the "ocean" protecting America, Zelenskyy pinpointed the single strongest argument for Europe not to be dependent on a US military for its security. However, I would question his assertion that the States would feel similar problems to Ukraine in the future.

The United States is not immune from external state-led aggression. There are only 55 miles between mainland Russia and Alaska and if one views the globe from above with shipping lanes opening due to melting ice it is conceivable to see new strategic challenges emerging for North America, though largely Canada, as a result. Nonetheless, with a largely non-troublesome Canada to the north of the continental US and the issues on the southern border with Mexico largely related to immigration control and contraband, there is not, nor ever likely to be a significant state-on-state threat to the United States.

The counter to this would be the Cold War which both goes some way to prove and challenge the point. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a direct threat to the US and as a result it is not a surprise that it came very close to direct conflict between the powers. However, the Cold War was not built on territorial conquest of the other main protagonist, it was a battle for influence and ideology across the globe. While intelligence operatives worked in rival nations, there was never a realistic prospect of US tanks on Soviet soil or vice versa.

The threat during the Cold War to western Europe from the Soviet Union, and today for much of Europe from Russia is quite different. While there will at times be a convergence of strategic interests between the United States and Europe, there is a far longer-term difference in perspective which demonstrates the naivety of European reliance on US hard power. It is the difference between the ocean and the doorstep.

Furthermore, this assessment is not simply about aggression from Russia, it is also relevant to modelling potential spillover from Middle Eastern conflicts, either World War, or multiple military campaigns throughout history which have seen the front line in Europe. While the context might be heightened by the policy and antics of the Trump administration the strategic predicament is by no means new.

In fairness to the United States, successive presidents have made the entirely reasonable point that while some nations hit and achieve the NATO spending requirement on defence, on the whole Europe does not pay its way in the alliance. Too often rhetoric from European leaders is not matched by hardware or organisational infrastructure. The situation existed long before the first Trump presidency, but that having experienced four years of Trumpian foreign policy, Europe was still unprepared for his re-election was an appalling failure of European governments.

That the UK was in the vanguard of support for Ukraine following the 2022 invasion perhaps demonstrates that the mechanisms of the European Union are not best equipped for rapid (but thoughtful) reaction to such incidents with its currently policy making structures. Furthermore, the strategic geography of, non-EU member, Norway with an immense Atlantic coastline, border with Russia and oil and gas supplies makes it crucial to security planning.

There is also a logic to Britain and France being at the fore of a coordinated European strategic defence capability. Two nuclear powers with similar geopolitical contexts and that in large part balance one another in terms of population size and economy scale. This is in contrast to either being the very little brother in comparison to the United States’ scope. Germany needs to step up. The nation's reluctance to develop a strong military in the last 75 years is understandable, but it holds world leading manufacturing capability which will prove essential to develop strategically secure defence production lines. Often the political leadership on security has come from the Baltic nations, Poland and Moldova, of course, along with Ukraine. Exactly, what criteria a coordinated European strategic defence capability would apply for membership would be a matter for debate, but there would be many influential components allowing a range of nations prominent roles. The EU should be at the table, and in Kaja Kallas they have a well chosen High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, but there are reasons to argue it is not the body required to steer a European strategic defence.

In truth, I am not optimistic that we will see the action to match the rhetoric. Even now, there is a reluctance to build for a future less reliant on the United States simply on the basis the US is needed for European defence today and cannot be seen to be shunned. This is short-sighted and ties European nations into ever more reliance on a neighbour with different strategic considerations. It is in the mutual interest of both US and Europe for the latter to markedly increase its defence capability. To do so would not be rejecting a successful NATO but reinforcing defence contigency and resilience. Political leaders come and go but the ocean and the doorstep remain a constant.