I Ran Cross Country in College
This past weekend I drove up to Lewis & Clark College to join the Cross Country team for their long run. I hadn't ran with them since I graduated last year. It had been even longer since I'd done one of the Sunday morning long runs. In fact, if I managed to stick with the team for the entire 75 minutes, it would be the first time I had ever stuck with them for the full length of the Sunday ritual.
Pre-race at the Sundodger Classic, one of my first cross country races.
"When I ran cross country in college" is a phrase I use when talking to people about my history as a runner that I often give no further explanation. Actually, I only ran cross country for one season when I walked on to the team my Junior year. And I ended up dropping about halfway through the semester due to a bad case of shin splints from the massive increase in volume that keeping up with a varsity squad entailed. Even though I only practiced regularly with the team for two or three months, it was a pivotal moment in my development as an athlete. So when I reference my collegiate cross country pedigree it's not entirely baseless braggadocio, it's because that experience changed my approach to sport.
That fall was a season of firsts for me. It was the first time I had ever had a structured training plan. It was the first time I'd ever had someone to call Coach. It was the first time I'd really felt apart of an athletic team. I had been a part of a cycling team before, but the disjointed nature of my first club could hardly be compared to the cohesion of a school sports team. All of these factors combined to push me as an athlete harder than I'd ever pushed myself before.
They let me walk onto the cross country team, but it's not because I was a great runner. I had run before, sure, and I felt like I could probably handle it. It was pretty naive, but when I signed myself up for the squad at the start of the Summer, I even imagined myself racing against the best on the team in the Fall. But when the leaves started to wilt and I laced up my shoes for the first day of pre-season camp, I realized a Summer of preparation didn't make you Prefontaine.
Going deep at Sundodger.
I remember my first tempo run, we set off from the house on the Oregon Coast our team was based out of for the camp and down the 101. I stuck with it through the warmup, but less than a mile into the 20-minute tempo effort I could feel my heart ready to burst. I looked around at my teammates' smooth, easy gait as they glided along at a steady pace. I felt like I was about 1300-meters into the fastest 1500-meter effort my legs could hold. For the first time of what would become almost daily during my time with the team, I slipped out the back, hoping no one would notice.
I was definitely outclassed, and it was hard. I didn't lead the pack in races, and I almost always finished last of the bunch. But I made marginal gains. And throughout it all, I found a group that embraced me immediately and was always encouraging of the effort I made. This was a turning point for me as an athlete, a trial by fire where I had my first taste of intensive training. That Spring, I started working with a cycling coach and applied myself to that sport with the same vigor I'd had for running the previous Fall.
This past Sunday's run was a 9-mile loop that took a winding trail down hill from the College, went along the shore of Oswego Lake, and then climbed back up a bike path to the campus. For the dozen or so other runners, this was a typical Sunday. But as we made our way up the bike path and approached the campus, I felt like I had reached a benchmark that had long alluded me. It had been two years since the Fall I'd raced with the team. In those two years I'd won bike races, ran a marathon, and had just finished a 125k Triathlon the weekend prior. But as I coasted back into the gym at the end of this loop, I felt as proud as I had after any of those accomplishments. For the first time, I had finished with the team.