Whatever this ‘grit’ thing is, I have some of it but only in limited resources.
I can train consistently all year round without too much bother and within that training (particularly as races approach) there will be a fair amount of hard work which requires concentration. It’s not unusual for me to be feeling nervous days in advance about a hard hill or turbo session that I have coming up.
I’ve found that racing ‘grit’ requires something else. A few years back my wife persuaded me to do cross country over winter. Thankfully I found myself injured and unable to continue with the series after the third one. I found them unbelievably mentally taxing and I knew I was wasting psychological resources on these races that I didn’t really care about. My wife was telling me I could just run them moderately rather than racing them. This made no sense to me whatsoever. If I have a number on I’m going as hard as I can and whilst I can train day in day out 365 days a year I reckon I’ve got 4 (5 max) racing efforts in me per year. I think that number is reducing with age so I have to chose where to spend those efforts very carefully.
I did XC for a number of years, loved and hated it in equal measure. The Kent League was hugely challenging as i was always around 90-100 out of only 110 or so
It meant i had no wiggle room to have an easy week without being close to last, which was great for that hard “training” substitute and motivation to push, but meant i sometimes chose to bin off a week instead of struggling through or going a bit easier when a bit under the weather or not feeling fresh. (FTR i was running ~45min for a tough 10k, standard was just very high, not many over 40 mins)
I tried it once and decided I was not a fan! XC is tough! I just don’t think you get many ‘casual’ runners at XC like you do road races.
True and you can’t enter without being in a running club normally.
I used to run three leagues, must have more of a masochistic streak than I realised!
Liverpool & District - high standard with occasional Olympic middle distance athletes running round grotty Liverpool parks. Once had kids throwing rocks at runners (Stadt Moers park)
Cheshire - even duller courses round football pitches, no wonder the league caved in
North Wales - all the best courses were here, looking back should have ditched the others 
I like XC!!!
Always have done.
Ran them as a youngster and loved them then.
One year the county champs was 12k lapping a school field, dreadful, and another was Kent Fairground with us literally crossing a ploughed farm field, impossible to run well.
My favourite league race was Somerhill School, my son is now doing it and i get jealous. Thats hard, proper hilly and muddy. Nothing comes close to the Southerns though at Parliament Hill. Was 15k (now only 12) and was knee deep mud every year. Being lapped on a 3 lap course is embarrasing though 
the top guys floated over the bog, i sank, every step was draining. i lost a shoe one year it was that bad. 1.18 i think my best was winners went 42ish. Crazy times for over 9 miles of mud and hills
Bangor was my favourite, running up a hill right underneath the old Menai bridge