Done

I recently decided to make the change to stopping indoor practices and running on my own instead. This comes after multiple controversial arguments with one of the assistant coaches that was upset that I was still showing up to practice every now and then yet doing nothing to help the team by not coming to meets. I almost took it as a compliment at first when he said that I was the force that could always lead us to victory in years before. He said I could always help them win or come closer to winning each meet. So far, for the rest of the team, we have less wins and more ties than in years before. I understand that this coach is upset that I am no longer present to help the team squeeze out those few extra points to bring the team into the lead. However, this dilemma was already worked out between me and my coach weeks ago and it was working fine for me until the assistant decided to get involved. I told him that I appreciate it and the only reason why I am still even on the team is to stay in shape between cross-country and the outdoor season, which I will compete in. But, (and I know this sounds incredibly mean), if it really all comes down to just me and the points that I would score in an indoor meet that would lead the team to victory, I cannot help but think that's a signal that maybe some members of the team need to improve as well. It still bothers me when I think about it now, even though my teammates watched the entire argument and some even vouched for me. However, after that one day, I made the false accusation that that was the last time that I would ever get in a confrontation with this coach.
I was wrong, I made the decision yesterday after one last and final fight between us. I ended up getting loud, saying "Well it doesn't matter, Coach Monz and I already worked this whole thing out! I'm gonna keep coming to practice and if you don't like it, then that's too bad for you!"
"Excuse me? I am your coach!"
"No, Monz is my coach, you and I have never worked together before, you're opinion doesn't matter to me! This is between me and Monz, so just stay the hell out of it!"
He walked away, so quietly, and I saw other members of the team looking at us, them immediately turn around as soon as I looked at them. After leaving practice that day, I decided on the drive home that the assistant coach was right; if I wasn't going to compete and help the team win then I really did not have any place going there. Therefore, I will continue to run on my own time and over the weekends. This would also give me more free time for homework and social gatherings. I'm still finding it difficult to find time to run on my own before it gets dark. I'm hoping that days will get longer and that it warms up outside within the next bit of time before March when the outdoor season begins.

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.

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.

EMass D5

I'm sorry for how rushed this is (I write a lot of these way ahead of time and post them all on the same day), but this morning was very stressful because I could not find my uniform. I ended up having to ask the team captain who no longer runs with us) if I could borrow his, which he luckily agreed. It was frosty and hopelessly windy today, to the point where I lost all feeling in my arms, hands, and ears during our warm-up run. And it was even worse during our strides because of how tired they made me, despite that they always felt easy in practice, but I shrugged it off as part of how nervous I was. The boys team had a reasonable chance of making it to the Mass All-State Championships at Stanley Park. It was all dependent on our 5th and 6th finishers (Brendan and Sam). When the gun went off, I bolted; my nerves all shot out adrenalin at the same moment. I felt great my first two laps (it was the first runners high I had ever had during a race). I crossed the one mile mark at 5:28 and the two-mile mark at what I thought was a 12:05 unknowing that the clock was 50 seconds fast. Because I thought I was so slow, I ran my heart out the last mile; I could feel my exhaustion catching up as I closed in on the last 800 meters. I kicked as hard as I could, passing 10 people before crossing the finish line at 17:14. Only losing to my top teammate by 6 seconds and beating Vincent by 28. I was met with hugs and high-fives from my parents and teammates. I was surprised at how I ran so fast despite feeling good for the vast majority of the race. The best news is that my top teammate, Tyler, Vincent, and I are all going to All-States next week. Unfortunately, neither Brendan nor Sam had a good day and as a result, the boys did not qualify as a team. On the bus ride home, I swear I had heard Vincent crying softly.

Post DCL & Upcoming

Franklin Park has been declared a success with a new record of 17:49 despite my shortage of kicking at the finish. Once again edging out Wayland's top runner by a fair 3 seconds. Although I finished after Vincent today, I still felt refreshed knowing that I am capable of running a sub-18 on a very slow course without killing myself. I noticed I felt so shortened at the end that I had to stop kicking with 100 meters left to go, and had to start up again at the 50 meter mark. I told this to the assistant coach and she said "that means you ran well." Even though I am excited that I ran what I did, there is still some disappointment about missing the all-school halloween assembly, it confused me on why this meet had to be on a Friday, when every other year it had been on a Wednesday. At least now I will get two more weeks off from meets while preparing for what is likely my last cross-country race of my high school career, the Eastern Mass Division 5 Varsity race in Wrentham, MA. Other than Barnstable, Wrentham is my favorite course even though a lot of people do not like it. Not only is it quick, but has a few small up-and-down hills, which most runners consider to be a disadvantage. For me, they give me an extra step (no pun intended) to pass other runners who have a tougher time with them (I only have a tough time with consistent long and steep hills). The only thing that deeply worries me is that the warm weather is expected to turn cold by the end of next week, and while I usually feel worse running in heat, I always end up running faster due to increased blood flow from a high body temperature.