To this day I cannot remember how I decided to join my middle school cross country team back in September of 1998. I do remember, very vividly, how I felt after our very first practice. I don't even remember the day's workout. I do know that we ran 1/2 mile around the track. It was only after we finished that I found out it was only the warm-up. I thought that was completely crazy. Who warms up by running before they actually run? I probably don't remember the actual workout (it was probably perimeters around the athletic fields) because it was so tramuatizing!
The next day, I remember feeling completely sore. My entire body felt like it was laminated. I could barely walk, stand up, sit down, or even turn my head. To this day, I have never been as sore as I felt then, not even after my first marathon. In hindsight, I was probably just jumping into things too fast. I went from basically running nothing to doing around 2-3 miles (without walking) in practice. But, I didn't know anything at all about running back then. I just did what my coach told me to do and assumed how I felt was normal. Ignorance certainly is bliss! That mindset also helped define my approach to running which has lasted until this day.
I truly believe that if I started running on my own, I would never, ever be able to reach the times I'm running now. Conventional wisdom and training theory for amateurs and people just starting out are so ridiculously conservative these days. It's great for keeping people injury free and keeping them going without discouragement, especially if they are just looking to "stay in shape." But, it's horrible for showing people what it takes to run as fast as your potential will allow. I quickly thought it was normal to run hard, and feel tired more often than not. I thought soreness, searing pain and extremely heavy breathing were all part of running. If there was no pain, I wasn't running hard enough. In a race, if I didn't cross the line completely exhausted and didn't feel like a train wreak most of the way, I hadn't run fast enough. Frankly, without just diving into it like I did, I would have ended up being too soft. I certainly would have been much further away for the "true runner" that my Once a Runner quote describes.
I'm sure a lot of people would have thrown in the towel after feeling that terrible. However, I actually felt proud of being so sore. I remember bragging to people telling them how bad I felt, and that I was going back to run again. So I showed up for the 2nd day, and the 3rd, and just kept coming back. The soreness eventually subsided, and I started getting accustomed to running.
I really can't remember weekly mileage totals, or our training cycles and what not. It never even crossed my mind to track such things. Looking back now, I certainly had no idea what I was doing!
When I was running middle school XC, races started out at 1 mile, and about halfway through the season, they would bump to 1.5 miles. My first race ever, was against Commack, and they were one of the only schools that had a real dirt trail cross country course away from their actual school grounds. It was raining so ridiculously hard. To that point in my very short running life, I had never run in rain like that before. I was both nervous and excited.
As per standard procedures, we walked the course beforehand, then lined up and got ready to start. I remember very little from the race. All I know is it was hilly, the footing was bad, and it hurt a lot. About 0.2 miles from the finish I actually fell down. I got forced up a little lip on the side of the trail by another runner and took a rather cushioned tumble. I literally bounced right back up and passed back all the people that passed me when I fell.
I think that incident is why until this day that I hate getting passed, and cannot run right behind or right next to someone. My time was something over 7 minutes,; times didn't really mean much to me back then.
Beyond that race, I have very little memory as to what transpired. I do know I started learning my first lessons about cramping. As the season wore on, especially in races I start experiencing terrible side cramps and stitches. I actually thought the cause was drinking too much water beforehand. Of course the problem was the exact opposite. Even before I cut back on water, I was not even drinking close to enough. It took a while, but at some point I figured it out and got into the habit of drinking water throughout the day. It's a habit that continues to this day to keep cramping at bay. Though, now I'm also better at just sucking it up if I do get a cramp.
When Spring Track rolled around, I immediately picked the Mile (actually 1600m, 9m short of a mile) as my event. It was the longest race you could do in Middle School, so I decided I would become a Miler. I dabbled in the long jump for a little, but I knew really early on that I would be a distance runner. To that point, my mile time was probably somewhere in the 7s. I don't remember exactly when I went sub-7, but it was sometime during Middle School.
As 8th grade wore on, my times continued to slowly creep down. Obviously, only being in Middle School, we weren't exactly running high mileage. However, with the training load we had, I was seeing results. I quickly became determined to get faster, and keep knocking down my PRs. Nothing would beat the sense of accomplishment of achieving a new PR. Racing quickly became my favorite part about running.
By the time I moved onto High School, my mile time was down somewhere in the 6's. I can't remember if it was high or low 6's. I do remember that around that time, I came up with the goal of breaking 5:00 in the mile before I graduated High School. That become my first long term goal.
My High School running began in late August, 2000, but that is a story for another day...stay tuned for Part II
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