The following practice

This post is going to be different because for the first time in almost a month I will be covering a practice instead of another race. The captain (who will also rename nameless. He instead will be referred to as "M") has been requested the day before to get a blood test to see if his iron or ferritin levels are low, as these could possibly be the case for a naturally lower level of endurance, and therefore a much slower time. But as parallel with my dilemma, all of his tests came back negative. But one thing I did notice about M is that he was only struggling in races, but unlike with my story he seemed totally fine and full of energy during practice regardless of how hard or fast our workouts were. One other thing that makes M different is that while he is only about 5'9", he has a large BMI (165 lbs) due to his strength. M is the strongest person on our team, and his average 10-rep bench-press is 160 lbs. For an athlete, it is actually not uncommon for someone to bench around than his/her own weight, but for a distance runner, it is quite a lot. For instance, I am 5'4" and 120 lbs, my average 10-rep bench-press is about 105 lbs.

I am very happy to be back to my old good runner self, but it is very hard for me to relish in it knowing that there is another runner who was once sub-18 and now runs worse time as a senior than he did as a freshman. At least in my case it was only around a minute slower than my junior times. As I see him struggle and walk away after every race with a sense of doubt on his face, I feel increasingly ashamed for being all "woe is me" and feeling so sorry for myself. I wish I could help M, and it pains me to see him so unsatisifed and upset, despite he has lacrosse to look forward to in the spring. Only time will tell whether M gets over his block like I did, and who knows? Maybe he will come back stronger than ever, if not in cross country, maybe during indoor track (he won every 1000m race the past two years).