Settling

Before setting out for a long run our second week of practice, my coach did not assign me a group. Instead, he told me to follow him to his car and that he wanted to have a talk with me. I got nervous when he started the conversation with "I'm hoping that this is something you'll understand." "I know you don't want to run in any meets", he said. I told him that my reason for not competing was not that I did not want to, but that the indoor air (regardless of how well the fumigation tests) always makes me very sick and it takes upwards of 4-6 months to heal completely. If not for my sensitivity to the air, I would have been more than happy to compete. My coach began to tell me that because he believes that all I had done for the track and cross-country team over the years, I had basically become an important symbol to the rest of my younger teammates. And he told me that if I was not going to run, then he did not want me to show up to practice as often. He claimed that this was because having me around all the time would give a false impression to the others that I would be one to help lead us to a wide range of wins for the season. While I had given it my best attempt in the past, I could never run a race too well on too-small an arena.And the worst part was getting hopelessly sick for months and I would end up missing the vast majority of the season anyway. When my parents found out, they strongly disagreed; I honesty had the sam thoughts as them but my coach and I have built a very good relationship over the past 4 years, and i would not want to jeopardize that by creating any controversy with him. On a more positive note, my younger brother just had his first race ever last night at the Boston University indoor facility and while he did fairly well with a 6:03 mile (it's his first race, cut him some slack) he kept complaining about how dry his nose and throat felt and he probably could have broken 6-minutes is the air had not been so poorly fumigated. I kind of feel bad for this next part, but I have to admit that I was surprised to hear about my brother's time. I hate to say it but I would have assumed he would have been somewhere in the high 7's or even possibly dropped out of the race. But he said that running with his other sophomore friends made it less frightening and made him feel naturally more compelled to stick with them. He unfortunately could not end up beating any of them, but at least he did not finish in last overall. It came to a big surprise that my brother could hit around the 6-minute mark when I noticed him struggling in practice almost every day. Then again, he does share practically the same DNA as me.