Some people ask me, “what are you doing? Running for fun?” Or “Are you CRAZY?” Well, when I answer those questions, I say yes, I’m crazy, I run for fun, want to join me? Most of the time they say no, but that’s not surprising. But when they ask, why are you on a running team? I laugh. They have no idea. A Cross Country team is different than every other team I’ve ever been on. The sport is not what you’d expect, it seems like it would be every man for him self, but its not. When you go the meets it’s not just you against every one else, it’s you and your team.

Scoring in XC is different from most other sports; there is individual, which is what ever place you get in the group, and time and there is Team, which is also dependant on place. But the team scores are on the top five runners from your team, guess what place I was… I was number 6 on a 5 person team.

In most sports people who aren’t any good get put of to the side, water boy, towel girl, 3rd string, but not in XC. The whole mind set is different. People aren’t good and bad; out there we’re all runners, all there to race.

The team is really what I want to talk about. These people are people you train with, and sit on a buss for hours with, they are like a giant sweaty family. There’s a special kind of a connection, I feel, to your XC team. It’s hard to really find something that will gross some of the real hard core runners out. Our season starts during the summer, witch around here is insane, the temperature during practice is around 100o. Any sort of exercise has you pouring sweat like a cherub fountain. So its not really an option, your team is going to see you at your nastiest. But that doesn’t really matter, there’s still jokes going around, nagging on the coach and people looking like there going to pass out. I come in towards the back of the pack, like I said before, but every time you come past anyone on the team you hear a “good job! Almost done!” it doesn’t matter to the people on the team if you’re last or first, it just matters that you’re out there, and that you’re trying your hardest. That’s what I laugh about, people who ask me don’t even know, and they will probably never find out just how awesome this sport is but I hope I can encourage you to try.