1200 words

It's late on a Tuesday afternoon, I'm stepping up to a thin white line spray painted into the grass. For the past two weeks I've been running more than I ever have in my entire life. I've quickly been forced into the closest thing I could call "in shape" that I've ever been in. My nine teammates surround me giving me tips about what to do when the gun goes off. Being the only freshman, I'm the only one who is finding everything around me new.

When I came into the first day of practice, I didn't know what I was getting into. As a middle school football player and unmotivated recreational runner, I had never run more than five miles, slowly. I first met a sophomore named Bo Waggoner, who would go to state the next 3 years and become the top runner at Duke University. He was a very down to earth guy and seemed happy to know that at least there would be one new person on the team this year. Eventually the rest of the team showed up; Five seniors, a junior, and three sophomores. Coach Dugai finally arrived and talked for a short time about the season ahead. Afterwards, we did a short jog to the track and warmed up.

Our first run would be four and a half miles. The first day loop was what it was called, due to the fact that it had almost always been Dugai's first workout for his team. We started right outside the football stadium and started at what would eventually become an easy pace for the run. For my first year, though, I was always running at almost my fastest pace, which was still pretty slow in comparison to the rest of the team.

The first day loop is basically a square, it starts off going to a main street and turns left at every main street until your back where you started. When I started off this run, the route had been explained to me but I still wasn't overly sure what it was. The team pulled very far ahead of me by the time I had gotten down the first street. By the time I got to the third street, I was very tired and couldn't quite remember what the route was. I ended up turning into the Toledo recreation center, which I knew as the route for the Maumee 5K and tried to figure out if the team had gone this way.

After somewhat wandering around I decided just to go back to the high school through the 5K route. As I came down the last street, the team had been there for a good ten minutes waiting for me to come in. Feeling very disappointed with how bad of shape I was in I was already contemplating quitting the team and coming back next year. As I ran towards the end of the loop the team was lined up next to the end and started clapping me in. It made me feel accepted by a team for the first time and I quickly changed my mind about quitting and finished the run.

For the next two weeks we practiced hard and the team was always helping me along the way. When I played football in middle school, I was horrible and most of the team let me know on a daily basis. When I started cross country though, the team knew I wasn't fast, but they were always trying to help me and encouraging me along the way.

On the second Thursday of practice, we ran a workout known as 800s. They are basically a speed workout made to make you faster but not without a good amount of pain first. The idea is to run at race pace around the track for two laps. Then, after a couple minutes of a break you do it again and try to match that time. It's not so much about having the fastest time on one of your 800s, but about keeping a consistent time.

Realizing how hard every other workout hard been so far, and how much the team had warned me about them, I knew this was going to be a very difficult run. We all lined up on the track, we were going to do four today, we were told. Coach Dugai gets us set and says go as he starts his watch. I raced around the track twice coming in at a time of around 4:30. After getting a drink we did another, followed by another. The next two I came in around the 4:40s. When the last one came up I prepared to give it one last go. After I came around the first time two of the runners were already done and one of them, Alex Washburn, joined me and started pushing my pace. He ran slightly in front of me constantly pushing and saying things like " Come on Phil," or "Push it, just stay ahead of me." I started running with everything I had to stay in front of him and with the rest of the team cheering me on I finished the two laps in a time of 4:16.

During every long, slow run, the team would run at my pace and help me get better by giving me advice. Finally the day of the first race came.

Our home course was an old fort from the war of 1812 named Fort Meigs. The course ran around the outside of the fort so there were a number of hills making the course very difficult. As we stood at the line waiting for the gun to go off, I was filled with nerves. I had no idea how to strategize my race, what the course was like, or how I was going to do.

This race was always the first of the year and is known as the Maumee Lid Lifter. Our team would invite three or four schools to run but only two would normally show up since they were small schools.

Being a home race, Coach Dugai was the starter. He gave the simple rules that I would hear dozens of times over the next four years. The white lines mark the course, 2 laps around the course and finish by the picnic tables. Then, "I'm going to put the gun and my other hand up, I'll say runners set. You step to the line. Then when everyone is still, I'll fire the starting gun and drop both arms. Good luck."

When he finishes his speech, we are all quiet waiting for the first instructions. "Runners set!" We step to the line. BANG! The gun fires and twenty-some high school runners are sprinting to the first turn. I quickly fall into the back of the pack and let the flow of adrenaline carry me through the first half a mile. As I come around to the end of the first lap, I get ready to go up the biggest hill on the course, Agony hill. Named mainly for how long and steep it is, making it sheer agony for most runners who have to climb it during the race.

As I make my way to the top of the hill, most of the people watching the race are at that spot to cheer us all on. The cheering gives me all the motivation I need to get to the top and I cruise through the last part of the hill. The rest of the race flies by as I battle with another team's last runner. As we scale agony hill for the last time we are neck and neck. We come into the last turn where I learn that, while I had been giving all my energy over the entire race, the other runner had not and he quickly sprinted away from me to the finish line. I ended up coming in last place with a time of 29:47. To cross country standards, that's a very slow time. But to my own standards, that was the fastest I'd ever run. The team congratulated me on my first race and we gathered together to talk to the coach about the race.

He congratulated us or winning the meet and told us to get ready for the warm down. At our home races this meant a three mile run home.

We got home and the next day began preparing for our race on Saturday. Now that the season started and we were kind of in the full swing of things, training was a lot easier. Instead of doing difficult runs almost daily, we changed to having a long run on Wednesday, 800s on Thursday, and a short easy run on Friday to prepare us for our Saturday Invitationals. When Saturday finally arrived, we left the high school at around 8 A.M. to ride the bus an hour away to the Fremont Ross Invitational. An Invitational is very different from a dual/tri-meet in that instead of two or three teams, there are around twenty and the races are all broken up. There are two divisions and varsity is separated from junior varsity.

I'm going to attempt to explain the semi-complicated method of scoring for cross country, so if it's hard to understand, you're not alone. On any team the top 7 runners make up the varsity squad. Five of them score points and the last two try to beat the other teams' top 5 to displace their score. The lowest overall score is the winning team. If your finding it hard to understand, don't worry it took me about half of my freshman year to fully comprehend it as well.