XC, Part 1

Prior to the last few years, my experience with running was limited to a couple years on the track team in junior high (during which I steadfastly refused to run anything longer than a single-turn race, thus finding myself consistently entered into the 200 hurdles.  This was not an event to which most teams committed their strongest runners; typically, the entrants more closely resembled those who you might expect to be competing in, say, the shot put.  Or the chess club.  This made success easy to come by; I never finished worse than second in any race.) and one season of cross-country.

I ran cross-country my senior year of high school.  I did not do so out of a conviction that I would be an invaluable member of the team.  Unless the coach esteemed sarcasm and the ability to crack wise more highly than speed or endurance, I was destined to be more of a hindrance than an asset.  Thankfully, I did not let my complete lack of ability keep me from joining the team; my friends ran and talked about how much fun it was, and I wanted to be a part of that.  I thought I was prepared.  A teammate and I had been running sporadically for almost two weeks, sometimes as far as 3ish miles.  This was gonna be easy.

On the first day of practice, we all showed up at the high school gym.  The first day of school was a couple weeks off, so the school was largely empty.  The coach called out a few names from a clipboard.  This was Group 1, consisting of the runners who would most likely comprise the varsity squad.  Eventually, a friend and I were called to the front to lead Group 4.  This was a decidedly non-varsity group, made up of freshmen, other newbies, and anyone else considered not necessarily the top of the heap, or even residing anywhere on the heap.  We led them on a merry four-mile trot through town.  This was further than I had ever run at one time, but I was still feeling reasonably okay when we returned to the school.  We did some push-ups and crunches.  Then, Coach uttered the words that rendered me never quite the same again: "See you guys this afternoon".  Apparently, I was expected to return that very same day and run again.  Thus began the two-a-days phase.  In the morning, distance runs around town.  Afternoons brought speed work on the track.  Everything done with an eye toward peaking for our first meet in a couple weeks.

Finally, the day of the meet arrived.  We boarded a bus and traveled for an hour to another school.  The meet was broken into three races, freshmen-sophomores, junior varsity and varsity.  Because I was neither a freshman nor a sophomore, certainly not varsity, and because there was no "an embarrassment to himself and others" race, I was slotted into the JV contest.  As this was the first race of the year, and we were definitely not the cream of the running crop, the freshman/soph and JV races were contested at a distance of 2 miles, rather than the 5K that would later become the norm.

This was a tremendous boon to me.  All the work we had done in practice left me a vastly improved runner, but one without the slightest clue about pacing.  I decided that, in order to have some energy left for my finishing kick (during which I envisioned myself running with such skill and vigor that I overtook the entire field right before the finish line), I should run a cautious first mile.  Apparently I was a bit too cautious, as I reached mile 1 in approximately 243rd place.  I quickened my step for mile two, running it about ninety seconds faster than my first; indeed, I believe I was still accelerating when I reached the finish line.  I did manage to pick up quite a lot of places over the second mile, but more importantly, I had learned a valuable lesson.  Never again would I feel so energetic when I finished.  I would go out quickly and finish strong.  I would leave it all out on the course, so to speak.

I had no idea at the time how foolish this would turn out to be.