“The runner cross country girl” is my label at my school, so when I found my times getting slower instead of faster, no matter how much I toiled, I began to lose my identity.
My junior year, the fastest time I ever ran any 3.1-mile race was 28 minutes and 40 seconds; however, the previous year my time was 25 minutes and 25 seconds. These results devastated my team and I due to me falling short of our expectations. Thus, I suffered tremendously through that season mentally and physically. “You can run faster,” is what people, including my parents, teammates, and coaches expressed to me, but I couldn’t conquer the physical and mental barriers. Consequently, I felt impotent due to the fact that I wanted desperately to be back to the 25 minutes and 25 seconds time I was running earlier, but my body and my mind restricted me from doing so. I was more frustrated than I had ever been in my life up to that point. It felt horrible letting my team, my parents, and even myself down. As a result, animosity for the sport that I had competed in two previous years grew in my heart, and that shattered me.
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One lesson that was necessary for me to learn was how to enjoy cross country, even if I was bungling it. Learning how to overlook all of the expectations that I was held to was essential. I needed to learn how to do something for my own reasons and not someone else's; to learn how to be satisfied with my own endeavors, even if they did not garner the desired results was imperative for my overall happiness and contentment. I strongly believe that I suffered through the 2016 cross country season in order to be enlightened on how to be content with my own efforts. That period of my life helped me to grasp that no matter how fast I run, there will be someone out there who says it’s not fast enough. That season may have contained failures, but it was the only way for me to absorb that failure is
I joined my school’s cross country team in the summer. At the beginning we performed pre-season workouts. The training was tough, but my proud personality and the very thought of what I had to gain kept me motivated and helped me push through the pain. Every time I felt like giving up or quitting, I would say to myself, “This pain is only temporary; remember that the reward will be permanent, and it will be worth the pain that I endure today.” I was able to push through the
My whole life, I always gyrated around sports, this athletic attribute carried all through high school. I spent my whole high school career running on the Track team. There I met my track coach Luis. I met him when I was a freshman, at that occasion I saw him as my coach and nothing more. Later on, I asked if I could work out with him after practice in the school’s weight room. My intention was to become faster and stronger. I wanted to achieve my goal of becoming the great athlete that I’ve been dreaming about ever since I was eight years old. I knew it wasn't going to be easy. I wanted to transform myself into a better version of myself. I wanted the Erik of today to be better than the Erik of yesterday. From then on, it was all history. He took me under his wing as a student, but as his
I have always loved sports and the competitiveness that comes along with them. In so doing, I have decided to eventually become either a high school or college coach at some point in my life. Subsequently, I decided to interview the Vilonia High School Cross Country Coach, Coach Sisson. As I walked into her office, I instantly noticed all of the trophies and team photos from all of the past years of coaching. She is also the school nurse so her office has first aid equipment intermingled into the trophies and team pictures. While I set up my notes and questions for the interview on one of the desks in her office, she was finishing up a diagnosis of one of the high school students who felt sick. After her patient left, I quickly started the interview in order to waste no time. She began with how she got involved in coaching. The Vilonia School District expressed their interest to her as being the next cross country coach several years ago. She was widely known for her passion for running and she gratefully accepted the position and has been a coach for numerous years now.
I am now officially in my Senior year of Cross Country , and am close to the end of my season. My first race of this year though was a big accomplishment for me, because I hadn`t been able to run. When I ran that race though it made me just so happy I was able to finish it, I was`nt happy with the time, but there is always time for improvement. I was glad to be racing again and being apart of the team again. I believe that my injuries were a barrier in my way, but they did not stop my sports career.
When the cross country season started in August I became a mentor for the new runners. I was still a runner but now I was doing my running through my peers. During each practice I would lead everyone in stretching and would follow with encouragement on my bike during runs. The freshman looked up to me as if I were an assistant coach and I knew I had done the right thing in being there every day for
“Be Prepared… the meaning of the motto is that a scout must prepare himself by previous thinking out and practicing how to act on any accident or emergency so that he is never taken by surprise.” (Robert Baden-Powell). Track season was getting ready to start and I was excited for it because I love to run. This was my first year in high school so this would be my first time to get to be on a high school track team. I went to the first practice, which was conditioning day, and ran as hard as I could. No matter how hard I was hurting or sweating I keep running and finished in the top group every time. Practice comes to an end and coach calls up runners individually and tells us what we are going to be running. He calls me up and I am just knowing that he is going to say the 200 or 400. To my disappointment he tells me I am going to be running the 300 hurdles. I hated the hurdles so to myself I told myself I wasn’t going to practice hard because it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wouldn’t practice hard so I got put on JV. I won all the JV races in the 300 hurdles so that just pushed me to not want to practice even more because I could win without practice. District track meet rolls around and Trey one of the varsity runners gets hurt so coach moves me to varsity. In my mind I am thinking this is going to be easy I haven’t lost a race on JV so I won’t lose on varsity. The intercom comes on and calls out for my race. It was time to go win.
Of the more than twenty million Americans who are running today, most who start do so for the wrong reasons, with the wrong attitude, and tend to lose interest after a few weeks or months. Many quit. This is usually because they become concerned with superficial goals such as time and distance and never discover the more profound mental benefits that running offers. (Lilliefors 15)
This past spring, was my first year running track and field at a high school level. I had spent my freshman year on the lacrosse team and had therefore missed out on track and field. From the other sports I had participated in at school, both coaches and fellow teammates had acknowledged my speed, this kept my confidence alive and made me believe I would strive in high school track
Most equestrians will agree that the most relaxing place to be is out in nature, with just you and your horse, with no worries in the world. The wooded cross country course and the rolling wheat field are a tranquil and quiet place to spend quality time learning about and enjoying your horse. The cross country course provides a motivating factor for eventers like no other. The wheat fields have a meditation-like feel with the quiet rustling of the plants in the soft wind.
I signed up to run track in the spring and went to summer conditioning for cross country. That’s when my coaches, teammates, and myself noticed that my running has improved significantly from when I first started. I knew that I had to work hard my senior year to achieve my goals for running. Running is a mental sport. The workouts I had to do were brutally painful and I had stay positive throughout the run because I know the training I had to do will help me during a race.
I devoted so much time and effort into that sport and to stop playing seriously like this was heart breaking. I listened to all my family and friends about how fast I was and decided to try out track. I knew that I wouldn’t hurt by doing this and I didn’t want to stop playing sports. I always thought how track would be a sport where if you have natural talent, you will be good. I decided to give it a go and after running over a mile in the first practice I was a little reluctant to keep going. I couldn’t keep running all these long distances when I’m not in shape for it. I kept telling myself this so I would just keep pushing through it. My mind was in a million places questioning if I should have just stuck with playing basketball even though I didn’t find it was fun as it used to be. So, after a few months of hard training and practice, I stuck with track. My coach, my family and my friends all persuaded me to do it because they thought I would do good and strive throughout the season. This was a hard change for
The start of the 2002 track season found me concerned with how I would perform. After a disastrous bout with mononucleosis ended my freshmen track season, the fear of failure weighed heavily on my mind. I set a goal for myself in order to maintain focus and to push myself like nothing else would. My goal for my sophomore track season was to become a state champion in the 100 meter hurdles. I worked hard everyday at practice and went the extra mile, like running every Sunday, to be just that much closer to reaching my goal. The thought of standing highest on the podium in the center of the field, surrounded by hundreds of spectators, overcame my thoughts of complaining every time we had a hard workout. When I closed my eyes, I pictured myself waiting in anticipation as other competitors names were called out, one by one, until finally, the booming voice announced over the loudspeaker, "...and in first place, your 2002 100 meter hurdle champion, from Hotchkiss, Connie Dawson." It was visions like these that drove me to work harder everyday.
Robert Brault once said “where the loser saw barriers, the winner saw hurdles”. Ever since my junior year of high school this has been my modus operates in life and sports. My main event in Track and Field is the 300 meter, you guessed it, hurdles. However, simply devoting myself to live by this “code” was not enough; actions spoke louder than words in May 2015 when, leading my heat of the race, I clipped my trail leg on the second to last hurdle and was forced down into the track at 20 mph. I didn’t get up, I laid on the track in a ball of self-loathing, anger, and pain. I never finished that race, and to this day that is one of my only regrets.
My most meaningful accomplishment was making it through my first year of high school. However, it wasn’t the schooling that proved difficult. It wasn’t a social anxiety problem or having to eat the cardboard they served for lunch daily. It was the running. Literally running. My school had joined the state initiative to make sure that every student completed at least one year of an athletic program before graduation. Yet, I failed to think of a sport where being underweight and lanky helped at all. So I ran track, specifically the 1600 meter race thinking, “What the hell at least if I collapse it won’t be because I got tackled by Ray Lewis’s cousin right?” I remember always walking up to the starting line with my heart in my throat and the track
Over the summer before my freshman year of high school, I decided that I wanted to participate in a sport. Preceding freshman year, I went to a small-scale private school which was devoid of many extracurricular activities. Transferring to Jefferson High School was a large adjustment that would take me out of my comfort zone. I first decided to run distance in track & field in the spring of 2012 to help branch out in order to make this