"We are running together and suffering together"

I started running because I wanted to complete my gym credit without having to take gym class. Now, it is something much more than that. My team is my family and I know that I'll never find a group exactly like them. Our team has over 200 runners on it which is saying something for a high school cross country team. I'm heading into my sophmore year and it will be my first year running. I've been attending summer conditioning and have just come back from a week long camp with my team. Even though I may not be the fastest person on the team, I still love this sport more than anything. It's the only thing that makes my cry as hard as ever but pick me up when I'm at my lowest. This sport has made me realize that you can accomplish so much if you work hard. I started running in 7th grade when I joined my middle school track team. Back then, I choose sprinting because I hated running even 1 mile. Little did I know, those sprinting workouts were going to be pure torture. After my first meet, I decided that sprinting was not for me and I moved to throwing discus and shot put. Bad idea. I was the worst thrower on my team. Not even lying, they always put me up first which is not a good position to be in. After that first track season, I had some medical problems that needed to be taken care of so I didn't participate in 8th grade. Going in my freshman year, I also didn't run track because of this ongoing medical issue that I was dealing with. In reality, I was relieved because I was scared to go back to the place where I felt I did so badly that I just didn't belong. During one study hall, freshman year my best friend and I got to talking and she encouraged me to run cross country. I thought why not? I knew a lot of people on the team and I didn't think it would really be THAT hard. That was in the spring so I would have to wait for my sophmore year to join in the fall. I went to summer conditioning expecting to be towards the middle of the team. Boy was I wrong. That first day of conditioning, I could barely run for 10 minutes placing me in the very last group (aka the slowest). Everyday of conditioning was rough for me. Throughout that though, I found my group and a really great coach who truly appreciated the slower runners and understood what it was like. Eventually, we worked our way up to running 30 minutes straight which was awesome to me. Even though our pace is not very fast we are running together and suffering through together. Even though it is only my first year running, and I am for sure not a varsity runner by any means, I still feel apart of the team and never fear being judged for my times. We all encourage each other no matter our spots on the team, we all realize everyone is essential to the team and we are one family. This year's camp was a hard experience with running my first ever long run and putting in more miles than I usually do. So many times I wanted to just say to the coaches "please take my name off the list I can't do this anymore". But so many times, my teammates encouraged me to keep running and I did. Heading into this season I'm nervous but I know that I can only get better. We are jxc. One team one fight.

- Anonymous