The fast pace, people shoving to get in front of each other, the cool air in the early morning, this is cross country. It makes me feel free, running down the open course with the bright, warm sun on my back. This is my sport.

On Thursdays, the team goes somewhere to eat dinner. We usually go to a restaurant or another teammate’s house. The team just relaxes and eats dinner, which usually consists of noodles and some bread. We had fun Thursday at Olive Garden before one of our meets when we played a joke on one of our teammates. A girl watched him eat the entire time we had been there, and on our way out, we gave her his phone number without him knowing. She looked very happy, but when we told him, he was not.

On race day we usually arrive at the course and pull a few pranks for a couple hours. We run around making stupid noises just to have fun and intimidate the other teams. It is always funny when we do that because all of the other teams just think we are a joke and aren’t any good, but when it comes time to race, we usually are one of the top three placing teams. On the weekend of GMC’s when we were pulling pranks instead of stretching or warming up, three different teams told us that we are going to place poorly because we weren’t taking anything seriously. We ended up being the first team from our school to win GMC’s in twenty years, which was very exciting. Since we won GMC’s, we even received our own escort back to the school that consisted of fire trucks and ambulances with their bright red lights flashing and loud sirens blaring.

Before our race we run the course for our warm up and make sure to stay out of the way of the other runners racing. When it is almost time for our race, I feel nervous about how I will perform, and I am excited to finally run. When we line up at the start line, I look down my left and right side, and I see about one hundred and fifty runners in all different kinds of uniforms. I think, ‘Am I going to do well?’ and ‘If I run well, we move on to the next race.’ Underneath, I feel my heart race, and the butterflies flutter in my stomach; but I try not to show how nervous I am. I can tell some of these runners are feeling the same way.

While I run, I don’t think about anything else. I feel free as I run, like all of my worries have just gone away. Early in the morning with the dew still on the grass, we run. The course takes us under trees with yellow and orange leaves changing in the fall. Over the horizon the sun is still rising. Many runners slip in the wet mud left from hundreds of runners on the course before us. There are steep hills each runner has to endure. The spikes from runners’ shoes hit the concrete making a loud crunching noise. As I run down the final stretch, people yell for their team, urging them on to get one more man. When I finish, my mouth is dry, but I am left with a feeling of accomplishment.

Cross country is a physical sport, but it is more mental. It is a team effort, and I need every one of the runners on the team to push me to do my best. Anybody can run a mile, but a good runner must tell himself that he has to keep pushing to make it to the end. Running takes determination and dedication. Cross country is my sport.