Cross Country

Andrew Seidner
11/23/04
Final Draft
Cause and Effect

Cross Country
It was the day of the seventh grade mile run. I ran around the track as fast as I could, hoping to beat my terribly slow sixth grade mile time, which was around nine minutes. At the time, I didn’t know anything about pace and after the first lap I was already tired and out of breath. My shoes were obviously not meant for running because with every step I took I could feel pain shooting up my legs. By the time I had come to the fourth lap the muscles in my legs felt like they were about ready to separate from my bones altogether. As I approached the end of the fourth lap, I sprinted towards the finish line, using up all my remaining energy. I then collapsed on the nearby football field, gasping for air. Strangely, my muscles hurt even more, probably because I did not have to think about running. It was as if someone had taken a baseball bat and had swung it into my shins, which seemed to hurt more than the rest of my leg. I desperately wanted to know my time, but it took me awhile to convince my legs to move. When I finally had regained the strength to stand, I went over to my gym teacher, who told me that my time had been seven minutes, eleven seconds. I just took around two minutes off my time! I smiled at the thought and was quite proud of myself for being able to run the mile much faster than I ever had before.

Somehow Dominick Newman, the track team coach, had seen my mile time improvement and one day he told me that I should go out for track. I wasn’t sure because running the mile had been painful and I was afraid that if I joined, in addition to probably being one of the worst runners on the team, I would probably end up being injured a lot. I told him I’d think about it because I thought it would be pretty cool to eventually be able to run as fast as the people on the track team. Some of who were able to run a mile in less than six minutes. In the end, I decided not to join because I believed that it would affect my grades and if that happened, I would probably end up being grounded. I felt bad about deciding not to join because I thought I would be letting Coach Newman down. He asked me several times throughout seventh and eighth grade, but I always said that I’d keep thinking about it. When I became a freshman in high school, getting good grades was surprisingly easier than in middle school. I hardly ever received more than an hour or so of homework and since I had a lot of free time, I thought about joining track. After asking my parents, I talked to Coach Newman about joining track. Because I had never done any sport involving running or any sports at all for that matter, he suggested I do cross country to get in shape. Thinking that I would just do cross country to train for track, I signed up for cross country for sophomore year, since cross country was completely over for that year and track was almost over. I did not intend to get into it at the time, but I would change my mind after my first meet.

It was a cold, rainy day at West Bend high school. I felt excitement growing inside me but at the same time I was nervous. This would be my first cross country race and I was afraid that I would have to drop out at some point. The first week of cross country practice had been rough on me, just as Coach Newman had said it would be. My legs ached and I didn’t know if they were going to be able to hold up for the whole race. Twenty minutes before the race, the rest of the sophomore team and I went on our warm-up run. Normally, the teams would have split into varsity and junior varsity, but for some reason grade levels raced at this meet instead. I thought it would be awesome to run with amazingly fast runners like Dennis Walsh and David Salmon. However, at the same time, I wished I wouldn’t be running with them because their distance ahead of me would only emphasize that I was one of the slowest people on the team. As I ran on the warm-up jog, I could feel aches all over my legs and I thought about dropping out of the race before it started. Although I realized that by doing so, I might give the impression that I wasn’t serious about running. I was only using cross country to train for track, but I made up my mind that I could at least try just a little, so that I could be somewhat in shape when track started in March. “5 minutes to the beginning of the sophomore race,” a man said over the many loud speakers scattered throughout the high school campus, and we jogged over to the starting line and slipped off our warm up clothes. Right after I had taken them off, I started to shiver; there I stood with nothing on but a pair of tiny shorts and a very loose jersey, both of which offered no protection from the cold whatsoever.
I, along with the other sophomores, took my place in our starting box. The man over the loudspeaker stated that there was ten seconds to the beginning of the race. “FiveFour Three,” the man said, and a few seconds later I heard the weak sound of a gunshot from the ref’s dollar store cap gun. I saw Dennis and David fly ahead to the front of the pack, while I struggled to keep up with the pace of the runners somewhere in between the middle and rear of pack. As the race went on, I gradually fell farther and farther into the back of the pack. When I finished, I knew that I had done very poorly. Although I did not have to stop or drop out, I had strained the calf muscle in my right leg and had to limp for the last mile, which slowed down my time significantly. When I learned that my time had been twenty-four minutes, I became extremely disappointed in myself. I knew I was better than that and I wanted to prove it. I was determined to be better and decided I was going to commit myself to cross country to show it.

The decision to become serious about cross country had several effects on my life. Many of them were good effects, but besides the injuries I had during the season, there was one main negative effect. Even so, I believe that the positive effects of joining cross country greatly outweighed the negative.
One effect of deciding to be serious about cross country was that it made the sport seem much more appealing to me. When I first joined cross country, I was unsure about how much I really wanted to do it. I actually started cross country practice in the summer before sophomore year because Coach Newman had suggested I do so, since I had no running experience. I enjoyed running with some of the people on the team, but at that point, I had doubts about cross country. The others ran with the desire to become better distance runners, and therefore probably enjoyed doing it. On the other hand, I was only doing it because Coach Newman had told me to. This attitude made running more of a chore than something I wanted to do and many times I decided not to go to the summer practices. The idea of distance running being a chore became even more evident to me in the first week of official cross country practice, which began shortly before school started. Summer cross country practice had just been twenty to thirty minute runs. However, in official cross country practice, we sometimes would do a twenty-minute warm-up run and right after that, we would do a speed workout. A speed workout, as the name suggests, involves doing a workout to improve your speed by running hard. I was usually tired after the warm-up and then having to do a speed workout would leave me completely exhausted. Many days after practice I would ask myself, why am I doing this? I reasoned that I could train on my own for track and that since I wanted to be a sprinter, I did not need to be good at distance anyway.

When I decided I was going to become serious about cross country, my negative attitude towards distance running disappeared. I realized that by doing distance I was building up the strength I would need in track. I always looked forward to practice because I would be able to make myself stronger and faster. Wanting to be a better runner brought me through all the tough workouts, which usually left me in a lot of pain to the point where I could barley even walk. Despite the pain, I went to almost every practice, not just because Coach Newman had told me to, but because I truly wanted to.
Another effect of committing myself to cross country, was that gradually, my running goals changed. At every practice I put forth my greatest effort, sometimes even injuring myself because I tried hard. Towards the end of the season, my hard work paid off because on my last cross country race I had gotten twenty minutes as my time, four minutes faster than my first race. This was a major accomplishment for me and made me realize that I may be able become a good distance runner someday. Track was no longer my main goal, and in fact, the roles of track and cross country for the moment are switched. I gave up wanting to be a sprinter in track and now next March I will be racing the mile so that I will be in shape for next year’s cross country season.

On the other hand though, deciding to put a lot of effort into cross country made it hard for me to put my full effort into other things, most importantly school. Many times a week I would go to the fitness center after practice to work on my upper body strength. According to many people on the team, having strength in your arms actually makes you run faster. I stayed at the fitness center for usually around half an hour, and since practice ended around six, I would not get home until around six forty-five. This became a problem because when I got home I had to eat, take a shower, and then finally start my homework. But by the time I had eaten and taken a shower, it was around seven thirty, and many nights I would have more than an hour of work in a few subjects. The combined hours of work sometimes would come out to between three and five hours of work in total. I was tired from practice and had trouble concentrating, which made me take longer on assignments that would have normally taken a much shorter amount of time. Because of this, I had to prioritize assignments, since I just did not have enough time to complete them all. Unfortunately, this lead to lower grades in some classes that I normally would have done better in, had I not been spending so much time with cross country.
Luckily, my parents understood that this was my first experience with a sport. However, I had learned the hard way that I could be serious about cross country, but I had to keep in mind that school came first. I was upset about my lower grades, but I still believe that getting into cross country has been one of the best decisions of my life. It showed me that your attitude towards something can determine your feelings toward it. At first I did not like cross country very much because I saw it as something I needed to do, rather than something I really wanted to do. As soon as I wanted to get better though, I started to like cross country, and now training for it is one of my favorite things to do with my free time. Being serious about cross country also changed what I wanted to do with running. I had been intent on being a sprinter in track, but distance running has been so great, that it is now my new focus. I have yet to experience track, but compared to cross country I doubt that it will come close in terms of satisfaction of achievement.