A Cross Country Life

Cross Country has become a huge part of my life now and it’s a funny story of how I joined the team. In 9^th grade I joined the football team as a wide receiver; however, I was never that great and did not get much playing time. I stayed with the team until the season ended and I was going to join the team the following year because I really wanted to become a lot better. At the time, I thought Cross Country was a joke because I found it pointless to join a team in which you just run in. However, once it was 10^th grade, I decided to take a history of art college class in which students met after school on Mondays and Wednesdays from 3:10 to 4:30. In football, if you came late to practice, you would lose a lot of practice and would not have playing time for the 1^st half of the game. Since many of my friends were in Cross Country and I was probably not going to do football that year, I decided to join the team in order to gain endurance and speed for football on the following year.

I joined Cross Country for a week and I felt like it was too much for me since I did not have much endurance, so I quit for about 2 weeks. For some reason, when the team had their first race, I kind of wanted to join the team again and so I did. At first, it was very difficult for me to even run 3 miles non-stop or complete the workout without walking at least once. When I was on the team, I was eager to become Varsity and did not even think it was possible for me since everyone was so much better than me. My first 3.1 miles race I ran in 21 minutes with 10 seconds, which is a very slow time; however, I trained through the season and ended up running an 18:52 at the end of the season to become one of the top 10 runners of the team. At the end of the season, my coach decided to give me a Varsity Letter. After the season was over, I decided to run Track and run during the summer to become a better runner for the upcoming year for Cross Country. This year, I suffered through many injuries that impeded me to run my best; however, I became our 4^th best runner of the team with my fastest time of 17:23. Now that the season is over, I plan to train over the winter, run Track, and train over the summer for my last year of Cross Country to win League, CIF, and qualify for State.