Welcome to my broadcast. Today, well, not that much happened, as life goes, but one thing definitely did happen: we had another cross-country meet.
On the way there, we opened our computers and started watching Star Wars movies. We somehow figured out that if you load a movie while you still have internet, you can sometimes keep watching it even after the internet disappears as long as you don’t reload the page or switch to something else. It’s kind of buggy, and I have no idea why it works, but it does. So we watched movies, and at some point on the bus, we also started singing “The Wheels on the Bus.” Yes, we are middle schoolers, and yes, we were singing “The Wheels on the Bus.” Anyway, it was actually a pretty fun ride.
When we got there, we immediately started looking the other team up and down, and they were doing exactly the same thing to us. Compared with our first meet, they honestly didn’t look nearly as intimidating. Last time, I remember looking at the other runners and thinking, Okay, these guys look serious. This time I was more like, They look… fine.
They were openly talking about us too, saying things like they could beat us, even though we were standing close enough to hear everything. I don’t think they realized that. I’m not trying to shame anybody, but their team just seemed kind of unorganized. It looked like somebody had taken a bunch of kids and thrown them together and said, “Okay, now you’re a cross-country team.”
And once the race started, that was basically what I expected. A surprising number of them were walking during parts of the race. Like, genuinely walking. This is cross-country, so I felt like that was probably a pretty good sign for us.
Somehow, I ended up getting second place.
There is one runner on our team named Sean who is just faster than me. He is genuinely better right now. My strategy was basically to follow him, because if I could stay somewhere near Sean, I knew I was probably doing pretty well.
He didn’t start insanely fast. Actually, his pace looked pretty controlled. But the thing about Sean is that he barely slows down. If anything, he seems to get faster as the race goes on. At one point I started falling pretty far behind him, and I almost lost sight of him. So I sprinted for a while just to get close enough that I could see him again.
I never caught him, obviously, but I managed to hold onto second place. The runner behind me finished around twelve seconds later, so somehow I actually had a decent gap.
And remember, this is middle-school cross-country, so I’m racing seventh and eighth graders too. I really did not expect to come in second. Getting fourth in my first meet already felt amazing, so second was definitely a surprise.
Sean also told me there is another runner named Kieran who is supposedly way faster than him. He made it sound like Kieran is about a hundred times faster, which I’m pretty sure is mathematically impossible, but somehow I also believe him.
As a team, the race was pretty one-sided. Beaver took the first several places, so I think it is safe to say we did very well. One of our runners couldn’t really race normally because she was dealing with a physical issue, which obviously wasn’t great, but overall our team was still in very good shape.
Now the problem is that our next meet is going to be much tougher.
We’re racing Milton Academy, and there are other schools there too. I know Milton has strong sports programs, so I’m definitely not expecting the next race to feel anything like this one. We have won our first two meets, but I already know the competition is getting harder.
One of the strangest parts about cross-country is actually standing around before the race and looking at the other teams. It feels much more awkward than swimming. In swimming, you go to your lane, maybe shake somebody’s hand, get on the block, and race. In cross-country, everyone is standing in one giant group staring at each other like, So… you’re the person I’m about to race through the woods.
It’s kind of scary.
Not scary like they’re going to suddenly attack us or anything, but there is definitely this weird tension before the race starts.
There was also some confusion with the course. At one point, people were telling runners to go the wrong way in the woods, and then it turned out they didn’t seem to know exactly what they were doing. Some course markers had also been moved or placed incorrectly. I don’t actually know why that happened, but during the race it definitely made things confusing.
That is one thing I’ve noticed about cross-country: compared with swimming, it feels much less exact.
Swimming has touchpads. Your time appears on a screen. If two swimmers finish almost together, there is electronic timing.
Cross-country? Sometimes they literally hand you a popsicle stick when you finish.
A popsicle stick.
What happens if two people cross the finish line at basically the same time? How do you review it? Where is the footage? There usually isn’t any footage. Somehow the whole system still works, but coming from swimming, it feels kind of crazy.
Anyway, today was a really good race. I got second, our team did very well, and now apparently I have another competition coming up almost immediately except this time it’s swimming.
So I guess there is no rest.
Tune in next time for my report on what happens when we race a much tougher cross-country team and whether we get completely destroyed or somehow survive.
See you next time.
Leave a comment