Cross Country: Racing

Cross Country Racing

By: Kaela Burke

A high school varsity cross country race is exactly 5000 meters, also known as 5 kilometers, or 3.12 miles for us standard system buffoons. There are several different factors to a race, such as weather, the course, what you ate that day, and your nerves, but every race is essentially the same, and can be broken down into four different parts: the take off, mile two, mile three, and the finish.

     Part one: the take off. The teams get lined up on a spray painted line through the grass, and for whatever reason, it's always on a huge field. The starting official walks out to the middle of it, turns around, lifts his gun in the air and

The shot fires. You're in a scene straight out of The Lion King. I swear if you listen closely enough you can hear epic operatic battle music, but for the most part that's all drowned out by the blood roaring in your ears as you fly down the takeoff strip in what can only be described as a stampede.
It's chaos. Absolute madness. Ribbons flying off of pony tails, three girl pile ups in the middle of the crowd because someone forgot to double knot their shoelaces, and war cries all around from supporting teammates and parents. Our coach tells us to use metaphorical bird blinders (we think she means horse blinders but every time we bring it up she starts talking about falconry competitions, so we just go with it) and zone out the other girls, but it's still one of the scariest parts of the race. Your adrenaline keeps you going through mile one, but it's a double-edged blade. See, the key to running distance is staving off anaerobic respiration for as long as possible - basically, keeping your breathing under control. Once you lose your breath, it's nearly impossible to catch it again without stopping, or walking - it'll lose you a boatload of time if you gas out in the first mile. So while it's great that you can sprint it, it's not usually the best tactic. Once you deplete your nervous energy, you've usually made it to the second part of the race: mile two.
This is where the pain sets in. You've been doing fine up until this point, but mile two is a whole new set of obstacles, one of the main ones being the literal course.
The takeoff field is the most open part of the race, because everyone's right next to each other, but once you're about a half mile in, it's almost single file, save the occasional pairs or trios of girls. Most of the trail is in the woods, and can be on anything from dirt to gravel to leaves. This is where a lot of face plants take place, whether its running into a tree (if we were coordinated we would play a different sport people) or belly-sliding down a rocky hill (shout out to the O'hare twins for falling down the same path in the same race). Once your in the middle of the course, half of your attention is on not tripping over roots, and the other is on the girl ahead of you. This distraction takes your mind off the pain for a while, but the trail usually opens up around mile three, and that's where it truly gets rough.
       The sobbers usually start weeping at this point. I don't really understand how they have any water to spare for tears, but somehow they manage, and boy, can these girls cry. Personally, I'm much more of a mutterer of various song lyrics, the classic I-can't-do-this-I-can't-do-this-I-can't-do-this, or a good old fashioned oh-my-god repetition, but there's no judgement from any of the girls on how you decide to cope with the last mile. It's not the pain your legs that gets to you, although that's brutal too - it's the pain in your lungs. I can't really describe it, but I imagine it's similar to water boarding, breathing in shards of glass, or having an asthma attack for almost half an hour. By this point the self loathing has taken hold, and you simply have to fight off the little pinpricks all over your skin and those weird little fuzzy black spots at the corners of your eyes, and for whatever reason keep running, until you can see the finish line.
       The finish line is arguably both the best and worst part of the race. See, when you're out on the trail, it's just you and the other racers, who are all in just as much pain as you are. The spectators and other teammates are all on the start and finish lines, except for the few points along the course where a few coaches or parents will go to wave cowbells or give you mile split times. When you get to the finish, you gotta give it your all, not only because you want it over with, but because your team's shrill cries of encouragement are piercing your ears the last hundred meters. You try and gauge the distance that you can really go for it and still make it to the finish line, because this last part is where you use any energy you have left. All the sudden you'e in an all out sprint, and you make it through the gate and it's over, and besides the fact that you still can't breathe, and can't talk or really do anything except walk or stand and try to remember what it's like to not be dying, making it through the shuttle and out into the cheers and hugs and high fives of your teammates is the only real reason any of us run. The team is the only thing that's in it for us - I promise you the runner's high is a hoax. There's no stronger bond than commiseration - warm ups and cool downs, track workouts, mile repeats, fartleks, races - we've gone through it all together, and quite honestly, I'm not sure we all would've made it otherwise. They say cross country's an individual sport, and that you run the race by yourself, but you're never really on your own: whether it's girls from other teams cheering you on, girls from your own team screaming endearingly in your face, or course officials reassuring you that you can in fact do this despite your chanting, it takes more than one person to get you through the race, no matter how fast you are. It's the community that keeps managing to bring everyone back to practice every day, no matter how often we threaten to quit. Cross country is a brutal, soul-crushing sport, but if that's what it takes to make the friends I have on the team, then I'd say it might just be worth it.