With snow on the ground and the course slippery, Rachel Horspool, a grade nine student from Brooks Secondary School, represented Powell River at the BC provincial cross-country race held in Prince George last weekend.
Out of 251 racers, Horspool finished in 54th place. She ran against girls in grades eight through 12.
“I was really hoping for top 100...so being 54th is just so great,” she said.
She qualified for the race after she placed 14th at the Vancouver Island cross-country race held at the end of October. All of the runners run together and the top 20 finishers go on to attend the provincials.
“We were all crammed like sardines and there was snow on the ground, so you end up pushing and shoving a bit,” said Horspool of her Prince George experience, “but the competition was great.”
Horspool travelled to Vancouver with her parents and then flew to Prince George for the competition. She initially had mixed feelings about wearing spiked cross-country running shoes.
“Saturday morning I met a girl who let me use a pair of slip-on spikes,” said Horspool. “I put them around my runners so I had spikes I could take on and off. I really don’t think that I would have done as well without them because it was so slippery and having spikes was just that extra. It made a lot of difference.”
Even though she is thrilled with doing as well as she has this year in cross country, Horspool knows that with a little more training she could be going to the Canadian national competitions.
