Grudges

The first few days of indoor track were very exciting. Seeing a ton of new faces to the team, including my younger brother, and old faces to bring nostalgia. I have been desperately attempting to talk to my coach about doing intramural. I basically want to use indoor to keep in good running shape between cross country and outdoor track in the spring. But every one of my teammates immediately denies that they want me to and claim coach will not let me either. Even though there is one person who did cross country temporarily between football seasons, and is now doing intramural due to a slight hand injury. The main reason I planned on doing intramural is because I simply cannot run indoors. No, I'm not bad at indoor, but the air in every indoor track facility is so poorly fumigated. And every indoor meet in past years had me left with severe runners cold and asthmatic related issues. And the fact that I would then start outdoor track while sick would make me even sicker as allergens came into season. But my freshman year I did not do indoor, mainly because I found no interest in it because it was mainly a sport for sprinters. Not to mention that because of this and the changing of the seasons, I had never really had a "good" indoor track season. I was out for most of last year with a severe hip joint injury and I only ran three races the whole season. My first mile finishing in an embarrassing 5:21, my second race a 5:12, and I eventually got my time down to 5:01 at my third and last race, not my best but better than I was expecting. But this year is different, with many old faces not returning (for reasons unknown), there is nobody on the distance squad to keep the mellow pace of our usual long-runs. Now with Tyler and Jill at the top leading every run, we always go way too hard for a long time. Despite my coaches strict orders to keep it "nice and easy, it has become a practical joke for him and all of us to make fun of Jill and Tyler because they have no self-control. I must admit though that I respect their will to work themselves practically to death over a simple practice, but I don't like when it involuntarily involves us who are just trying to get through practice without dying. I'm not complaining about hard days because I know they are essential to improving. I just find it annoying because literally every practice is a hard workout now; I understand that a runner needs his/her fair share of hard days, but they need their recovery days too; and it has been a pretty long time since I have had one of those.

Cross-Country Senior Recap

It has been one hell of a ride these past four years. Even I found it hard to believe that the slowest rookie of the freshman team would be one of the top three on the senior team (that being said, the standards were much higher my freshman year (We had two sub-16 runners at the time) ). I still vividly remember my first ever race at Waltham High School. Despite going at a jogging pace, it was still one of the most exhausting days of my life (it was over 80 degrees F), running 1.8 miles in 12:18. And I remember my first ever 5k on our home course where I finished in 21:06 and ended up with a 19:46 by the end of the 2012 season. I ended up no doing indoor track that year and going right to outdoor in early 2013, with the mile as my main event. I started with a 5:47 and finished the season with a 5:33, making a promise that I would break 5-minutes by my senior year. That summer I decided to go all out, regardless of how hot and humid or dark and stormy each day would be, I ran and ran and ran until my legs and chest went numb. And it paid off midway through the 2013 cross-country season, running a new record of 19:13 on my home course. Four days later at the annual Bob McIntyre Twilight Invitational I got my time down to 17:48, breaking 19 and 18 minutes for the first time on the same day, I ended up pushing to #2 on my team that year. After an unsuccessful indoor season, I found myself running low 5s in every mile race; that was, until the 2014 DCL Championships. That day, I went out so hard, and pushed myself so far; I thought I would just make it, but during my kick I saw the left side of the clock still had a 4 on it. I kicked so hard and broke through the finish line in 4:51, which still remains my current record. Then my junior xc season I ended up as the top runner on my team after our previous top guy sadly came down with anemia (I know it was not a fair comparison). The majority of the season was even until I ran a 17:27 at Wrentham Fairgrounds for the last race of the season, but not before injuring my pelvic bone that forced me out of running for over a month. After a rocky start to the indoor season due to my hip, I eventually healed and got my indoor mile down to 5:01. I thought if i could get an indoor mile down that far, outdoor would be a piece of cake; it wasn't. This is where my plateau came into place. I thought after a season with a 5:03 record and being beaten by other top milers from my school, that I had peaked and my running career was over. I felt terrible everyday during that summer and for the first half of my senior cross country season. Not until the 2nd half proved otherwise. It has been a remarkable journey from rookie to runner-up (pun intended). And now with indoor going on, and my younger brother joining me for this season, I hope there will be more to come.

All-State Championships at Stanley Park

This morning marked my last ever cross country race of my career. While it was almost a relief, I could not help but feel sad, like part of me was gone forever. The day started off as a usual meet day, full of nerves and struggling to gulf down a large enough breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee. It was a freezing cold morning, and I'm not going to lie: It pisses me off when we say that the bus leaves at 7:15 am tomorrow morning and people think that means to arrive at 7:15 am. The fact that we had to switch buses twice due to fuel shortage did not help the fact that we were already late. But at least there was no early morning traffic during the ride. We were forced to park at a nearby church about 400m away from the course, so I was forced to carry the water jug and the tent for about a quarter-mile. I cannot imagine that's something good to do before the biggest race of your career. Part of me was nervous watching the girl's race because I was scared of getting lost. The other part of me was somewhat depressed that it was just the 3 of us instead of the entire boys team. After all, this was the first race since my sophomore year that was on a course that I had never run on before. We warmed up on the 2-mile woods-coated path that fed the majority of the course, noticing how wooded and rooted the ground was but not the narrowness of the path itself. Upon returning to the tent, we stretched, put our spikes in, and headed down to the starting line to do strides. But when he gun went off, my nerves shot me forward. It was a tight end start and I just narrowly escaped being boxed in, though I was cut off my several runners at the turning point. During the race, the narrowness of the woods path made passing very difficult; it was also hard to go hard downhill from fear of tripping on rocks or roots. But I must have been doing good anyway because I crossed the 2-mile mark in 11:04. However, that means my last mile was slow because I finished in 17:11. I was disappointed that I did not break 17 minutes and would now possibly never get the chance to do so ever again. But overall, I'd say it was a good end. After stopping for lunch on the way home, we soon arrived back at the school. When I helped my coaches put away the tent, water and ice bags. I shook each of their hands; "thank you both" I said "for everything." During the drive home, I felt so sad and so relieved at the same time, and I swear I had heard Good Riddance by Green Day somewhere in the distance.