Personal Narrative: Cross Country

With my relay team stretched,warmed up, and ready to go, we headed towards the stadium where we would race against the fastest girls in the nation. Intimidated but not deterred we headed out of Tent City and into the gates of Turner Stadium. Knowing this was my last race I would run with my close friends and relay team, being it 's the last race of the season and we all weren’t going to be in the same age group next year, I had a whole new mind set. I was constantly thinking, “we have to make top ten because we can make top ten.” “We have the times, we have the strength, we have the speed, we just need to have the guts to walk in there like we are going to shred the track into pieces.

Imagine this. On a Monday morning around 9:30, it was that time of year again: Fitness testing week and it was the day where we took the hardest, most physically painful test, also known as running the mile. The first lap seemed pretty easy to run but towards the end of the second lap, finishing the other two laps seemed impossible, so I just wanted to just walk it from there, when all of a sudden, a rush of energy came over me, allowing me to run a good 10 minute mile. Although I did want to give up and walk the rest of the mile, I pushed through it and managed to jog the whole time, making the reward of finishing sooner feel even better.

To me, running is the greatest feeling I could ever feel. In my elementary days I knew I was the fastest kid on the playground. So naturally when I got to high school track was a must for me. My first track meet I was so nervous it felt like my heart was in my stomach. Then as I set myself up in my blocks, close my eyes, and wait for the gun to go off it was like everything went quiet.

Cross country has helped me with my transition from childhood and adulthood by teaching me that success is earned through hard work, determination, and leading by example. That's what I did after my first bad race, I worked hard and continued on my quest and showed my coaches and my teammates that I could lead the

Getting off the bus, I was ecstatic. It was my chance to help my team in achieving our biggest goal. For fall, the day was particularly hot and humid. I enjoy running in cool, chilly type weather, so the heat was a conflicting factor in my race. But I refused to let the heat bring me down.

In life, even though we are told not to do so, a lot of us “count our chickens before they hatch”. We make assumptions on things before they happen because we believe that if something seems so likely, it will happen. Well, that is what my Liberty High School cross country team did my sophomore year. Going into the year, we not only knew we were going to be strong, we thought other teams were going to be weak. The top teams from the state finals the previous year had all lost most of their key pieces.

During my final year of Cross Country around Regionals at Oglethorpe, I ran my final race for my high school career. Banks County was nearly number one in the State, the furthest we had ever ranked in history, and spirit and hopes for State Championship were high. I was nervous, like nobody’s business, I had messed up during my senior night because I was upset for my parents for not showing up and escorting me. And I was scared that I was going to do horribly. But as I ran, I realized that if I let my past mistakes and failures hold me back or get in my way, so I ran, harder and better than I ever had before and apparently even beat a “skinny kid”.

Speeding up At the beginning of the cross country season I hated cross country absolutely hated it, I would walk down the hallway of saline middle school look at all of the pictures on the wall and saw some of kids running and thought why is My mom doing this to me? I thought I was a terrible at it, I would run like a 9 or 10 minute mile. So when the school year came along I dreaded the end of the day I would look at the clock and think a tiny bit longer, please just a wee longer (and that is very very rare.) When the season began I had a lot of trouble, whether it was keeping up or if it was breathing problems, and My friend Zaske (who was and still is much faster than me) was nice enough that instead of going up with all the faster kids he stayed back with me, but even when he was going his slowest I still had trouble keeping up he would try to encourage me by saying “come on Michael just a little faster,” and I would respond with “i'm…

At my second mile, I was in 36th place and the coach had a worried face. At this point, I started to give up. I started coughing, had a runny nose, and was gasping for air. I finished the race in 36th place with a time of 19:44. I was exhausted and sad that the season was over, but I knew that I had one more season left to make it to

Cross country is more than just a sport. Most people associate cross country with running, but there are other things that come to mind when I think of cross. Family, pasta parties, get togethers, overnights, and the most devoted teammates come to mind. My life has been changed by cross country in so many different ways. Since I joined the men's high school cross country team three years ago, I've picked up a ton of really valuable life skills.

It taught me commitment, dedication, sportsmanship, and most importantly, it gave me inspiration. Cross-Country inspired me to exceed my running capabilities and see what I can actually do. With inspiration from this sport, I decided to run a marathon as part of a school project. After all, if I love the feeling from finishing a 3.1 mile race, just imagine what I could feel from a 26.2 mile race. Raising over $1,000 for the Alzheimer's foundation, I ran that marathon, and finished 5th out of nearly 200 people.

On a good day you 're mediocre, on a day like today, you 're horrific. That race, and the world-shattering heartbreak that followed, forever changed the way I saw running. I discovered that even hard work is not always invincible at the hands of fate.

Have you ever told anyone that you think dance is a sport and they have disagreed with you? A lot of people say that dance isn't a sport, but I disagree. I am going to be telling you three reasons why I believe dance is a sport. My three reasons are competition, practice, and dance is a stress reliever.

Running, that word gives many people different emotions that range all the way from disgust to excitement. Most people will say that they would never willingly run, at least not without some motivation and other people might even say that they enjoy it. This is why the sport of cross country is so strange to people, in fact it is strange to me as well that people would willingly run, despite the fact that I actually run cross country. The main reason that people don 't think running is fun is because it is so physically challenging. Running requires you to always be on your game, the slightest injury or distraction can prevent you from doing your best.

In those two and a half years I started racing. My first time I ever raced I got first place and it was the best feeling ever. I was so proud of what I had accomplished and wanted to keep racing. But after I placed first in that class I got bumped up to a new class that had bigger bikes and faster kids. At the time I was still on the 100 and I was racing kids on bikes twice as big as mine.