The race had come, but this one was different. Remy sat in the car seat trying to hold in his nervousness and joy while he watched the rain fall from the sky. In the previous year while sitting in the crowd, he told himself that next year he would not be in the same position as he was then. He wanted to be one of the runners that everyone would watch and cheer for as they run through the thousands of people around the course. As tear dripped down his face, he turned away to hide them from his teammates. What Remy set out a year ago was about to come true.
Only two hours of agonizing anxiousness until he would be running through the tunnels of noise. As he sat in the car waiting for the rain to subside, he took a few moments to think about the past year of training. He knew that it would not be an easy task to accomplish his goal of running at the state meet, but he knew it could be done. Every morning over the summer, he would get up and go for a run. Some runs were longer than others, but all were with the intention to put more miles under his belt so when the cross country season began, he could be ahead of the game. He rarely missed a morning run, but when he did, it was to usually go for a swim or go lift weights. Remy knew that all of this hard work was going to soon pay off. He also knew that those last sips of water and bites of food were not going to do anything to his body but more to his mind. All the physical work had been put in, and he knew it was now a mental game.
As the rain began to slow, the team was ordered out of the car to go warm up. There was only an hour until the gun went off, and now this was time for the mental preparation. Thinking a lot and speaking little, Remy and his teammates began to jog around the course. Nervousness began to enter Remy’s stomach as he watched the other races go by. As they completed their warm up run, they didn’t have much time. Only 20 minutes until their race began.
As Remy walked up to the starting line his stomach began to turn and questions flew through his head. Did I do enough training? Did I eat enough? Did I eat too much? What did I get myself into? Can I do this? But all of these questions stopped when Remy looked into his coaches’ eyes and could see that all the pain his coaches had made him go through was for this moment, the next 15 minutes of his life. As the referee began his countdown, Remy looked across the open field and said to himself, “I have done it.”