Hello peoples. Today I'm blogging about cross country. Here it goes.

Cross country started around a week and a half before school started. First I'll go through the different exercises. First off is the tempo run. In this we just run in a square with the coaches there to make sure each of us is keeping their own specific pace. Most of the time we do this in a big field but we've also done it on the track. Next is a fartlick. In this you jog for a random amount of time in a square before the coaches say sprint and you sprint for a random amount of time. So you could end up sprinting for 10 seconds or a whole minute. A new one this year was on the track. In this we sprinted the straightaways and walked the curves. Last year we had an exercise that we called the sedlar circuit and everyone hated it because you had to run up a hill diagonally and then across a knotted field with holes in it. It was boring, had no shade and really hurt your feet. This year the first time they took us out where we do it for a hill workout we saw construction was going on where the course was. We were ecstatic.

The course we have at my school is a 5k or 3.1 miles. The course starts on a field behind the school. After you run across the field you run down a hill and and you turn and run parallel to the field next to some train tracks. You keep going the same direction under the bleachers and then into the soccer fields. Then you run across the second one out the gate and run straight along a gravel path and turn left. Then you turn left again and along that gravel path is a tire that's the one mile marker. Then you turn right up a hill and along a muddy path until you turn right past a grove of trees and then you run a huge loop around a hilly field and come back out the trees which is the end of the second mile. Next you run a loop behind the middle school and back diagonally back towards the highschool, then you cross a parking lot and turn left and back across the field.

Now I'll tell you about the third race I've ran. I had run a race last year and one before this but it wasn't a real race because I ran after the race with other people that didn't have 14 practices which is the requirement to race. So this race is on a new course nobody on my team had run before. That race only 8 of the 10 guys could race and the top 7 guys run a varsity race and the rest run JV. So there are 3 races, boys varsity, girls varsity, and JV which is girls and boys but they are still graded separately. So I ran JV, the last race which was around sunset. It was my school which was me and half the girls and Jefferson who had around 14 or so guys. The first mile went by fast and by the time I did it I thought I had a group of 10ish junior and senior guys in front of me plus one guy in front of me that looked like he was at least a sophomore. This was pretty normal for the others who got around 10 or 12 place most races so I wasn't worried. Most the course was flat and went through fields and the woods. By the second mile I was beginning to catch up to the guy in front of me however if I kept my pace I wouldn't pass him before the race ended. After I thought about that some Jefferson people stood by the course cheering him on and I heard them say that he was in 5th place meaning I was actually only in 6th! So I tried harder and I managed to pass him not long before we would've entered the field that had the finish at the end of it. Shortly before I got into the field... I started throwing up. I had hamburger for lunch that day so I entered the field with all of the people watching me while it looked like I was throwing up dark crimson which they thought was blood. You always sprint the last part of the race to get the best time I so I had to sprint in order to stay in front of the guy behind me. So I sprinted as hard as I could and finished the race with ripped up legs, a stomach tying itself in knots, throwing up black, and breathing like I was missing a lung. After I got cleaned up my coaches congratulated me and told me that fifth place actually got a medal! On my team I got a medal and one other girl got a medal. Nobody else placed. Afterwards we went to chick fil ay before I went home.
So that's how cross country has gone so far. Bye.


- By Ashton