Notes
So tomorrow is my last race ever.
8th must be a good number for me. 8th in the region in XC junior year, 8th at counties last week, perhaps I will be 8th in the region once again tomorrow.
Last night at the orchestra concert, I walked out on stage to tune everyone, the audience clapping and the band ow-ow-ing, and I turned around and looked out across the rows of seats and realized that it was the last time I was ever going to perform onstage in front of everyone in high school, probably ever again in my entire life. And I will certainly never be first chair of anything ever again. I will never experience anything like that ever again.
And now tomorrow presents the same experience, albeit on a completely different stage. It will be the last time I ever run a race on the track at Chesapeake, the last time I ever run for my team, the last time I ever run in a track meet at all.
To think of everything I have gone through in my high school running career, it just amazes me that there could be so many developments, and so many turnarounds all in the span of three short years. First, there's the miracle that I ever became a runner at all; looking back over my first spring and summer in running club, I wrote so many times in my journal how I hated running so much and how it was the most miserable thing that I had ever done, and how I was the absolute slowest person on the team, to the point that it just wasn't fun. And then there was falling down the press box steps that June and injuring my knee, which was the start of my epic battle with my orthopaedist and the medical community in general; there was coming in 15th at Regionals that year, missing a state qualification by one second. Then there was Indoor. The misery that was Indoor. Then there was the curtailment of Indoor. And along with that abrupt end was the realization that I did love running, and that it was something more than torture, it was something I couldn't live without. And then there was tennis. The harbinger of more than just knee problems, there developed the hip injury that would make my junior year a sick pleasure derived from battling the pain and winning. And setting records. And winning races. The pain became like a companion, to the point where it was nothing more than a sensation, something to anger me and make me run harder to purify it to the point where it actually did hurt. And then another year of Indoor. Completely different from my first. This time with expectations. Expectations of "She'll be down to 12:15 by counties." Unfortunately, not even Ibuprofen and another bout with physical therapy could bring that about. Then there was the decision to ditch tennis for Outdoor, where I ran JV and ran faster than the varsity runners. Outdoor wrapped up, and thus began the summer that I vowed to bust my ass every single day so that come XC, I would be ready to pick up where I left off and fulfill what was left of my potential to be fulfilled. And that was great, I was faster than Laura Blevins until the middle of July. And then only God knows what happened. I don't. But everything that went down my junior year of XC finally caught up with me. I couldn't stay 120 pounds forever, I suppose. And thus I became, fat, slow, and anemic, and seriously considered quitting running entirely, if it was going to be like that. I ran what I thought was my last race, last home race, that same race that I had won the year before and set a school record on. And then I ran Meade. And barely broke 24:00. And Coach Slichter took me aside and said he wanted to see me on varsity in Regionals, and that if I was anywhere close to the top seven, he'd bump an underclassman off just so that I could work my magic on that course one last time. There's something about that course that somehow negates the hills (aside from its length). It was one of those courses that you could just feel. But it wasn't to be yet again, I got slower and slower the harder I worked, and became increasingly more frustrated until I went to the doctor and found out I was severely anemic. Which explained a lot. But it was too little too late. And I surrendered my last race with a time of 25:15, exactly 4 minutes slower than sophomore year. And then came Indoor again. I figured with a dose of iron, I'd be back to normal. But instead I decided to do something unconventional, something that pretty much everyone told me was insane, and still managed to run my PR in the 2 mile. And break six in the mile. Proving that distance was my thing. And then I ran a marathon.
Still not sure how that one happened. Took a day off, and launched headlong into Outdoor, running 7 miles with a 22:50 5K trown in there my first day back. Brilliant. Then there was the winning JV miles and two miles (and even 800s), I think I've won 5 races this year. But they don't even count. And then there was passing out. And the fallout from that. And the realization that you can't take 7 AP classes, run track, play the violin, do everything else on God's green earth, and expect to sleep and eat.
Which maybe should have been a warning sign. So maybe I shouldn't be surprised that my legs were tired today and that I twisted my ankle yesterday on what are probably the two easiest workouts of the year.
And what's the final advice? Pack your bags the night before.
Pack your bags the night before, and pack them well, because once you step on the track tomorrow, there's no turning back. And there's only twelve minutes and thirty-eight seconds in which to fit the contents, so choose what you want to take and choose well, because after the race, you can't go back to get what you forgot.
I want to be skull-dragged, kicking and screaming, under 12:30. Which isn't 12:05. But it's damn well close enough.
I'm a marathoner in the guise of a two-miler. I may not have the ideal two-miler's body, but I have the heart and the mind of a marathoner.
And that is more than anyone else running that race can say.
God help me.
"Every new beginning
Comes from some other beginning's end..."