The Cross Country Conundrum

It is considered one of the hardest high school sports — by me at least.

Cross Country, XC, CC: it forces you to push yourself incredibly hard.  The races are 3.1 miles of sprinting over hills in the woods.  Practices are continuous loops of hills over, and over, and over again.  Girls are spiked during the course by other runners passing them.  Those battle scars are almost as bad as collapsing in the final stretch, and girls having to hurdle you (I had to be the hurdler last year).

Yes, courses do sometimes look like this.

In a way, I am so happy this sport is over.  I love running, and it is nice to get outside after school every day.  However, I don't like sprinting six miles for fun.  For me, running is a connection to nature.  I wake up at 5:30 in the morning of the summers, and run into the early morning mist.  Or runs at 9 at night down to the river near my house, which the moon illuminates.

In cross country, I feel like I...miss that.  It disappears somehow—poof—and now I have to spend the post-season trying to find it again.  Long runs on wooded trails and my pre/post-sun workouts are ways I try to enjoy running again.  But by looking back on what I did last year after the season, the best thing to do is...nothing.

Running is known to burn you out.  Most runners purposely take one or two months off during the year, so they don't want to punch someone whenever they run.  While that is almost impossible for me to do because of lacrosse workouts starting the week after the season ends, it doesn't mean I can't take some of the holiday season off.

I would honestly recommend trying this for all you runners out there.  People who overdo it get stress fractures, shin splints, knee and heel problems, and the list goes on.  One boy runner on my team would run 90 mile weeks — until the full-asphalt regiment he was doing gave him a stress fracture in his foot.  He has been on crutches for the past month.  So don't push yourself to that point.  I understand marathoners and ultramarathoners run ridiculously long weeks for training, but just remember to do something that makes you happy when you run.  It will make such a difference.