The sun rises on a new day and the alarm goes off, calling all who hear its clamor to wake. The runner rolls out of bed, chasing the last fragments of half remembered dreams, stretching muscles and sinews to prepare for the day’s exertions.

Against the morning stillness a shake out is done, a short subdued run that banishes the remaining vestiges of sleep from the body. Afterward, breakfast is eaten as runners consume whatever sustenance will get them through the morning. From there it’s off to the course to face the day.

The race course is a dynamic place where teams of different sizes and abilities mingle together and jog about in a riot of color as reds and blacks mix with greens and blues. Each team makes their way to their designated tarp and proceeds to set up shop, some runners pop in their headphones and tune out the world, others try to catch up on homework with their books open in their laps, and still others socialize and try to forget the race that is coming for a while.

As the hours tick by, it comes time for the warm up. Men’s and women’s teams set off on a brief run to ready their muscles and steel their minds, jogging past in their matching gear, coordinated just for the occasion. Once the warm up is done and the pre race drills have been completed, it’s time for the last pre race checks, chips are secured, bibs are pinned, and a final trip to the toilet is made. Then it’s off to the line.

In running there is no thing so singularly terrifying as the line. It is the place of sheer possibility where all things are made and broken, where the gods are separated from the mortals. As the minutes tick down, the final preparations are made as the team strides out from the box and coaches offer their last words of encouragement. Then the official walks out on to the field. They go through their spiel that every runner has heard half a hundred times by now. Then they give the commands and raise the starting gun.

In those moments on the line, before the gun goes off, time seems to stretch into an infinity as every nerve is tensed on a hair trigger, every muscled stretched taut, awaiting the command to go forth and fly. And then, with a sound like a clap of thunder on an ocean of silence, the gun goes off and the race begins.

The first k goes by in a rush of adrenaline and clashing limbs as runners jostle and shift like a torrent of floodwater released from a dam, consuming everything in their path.

The second and third k’s pass by with little change, the pace settles down and positions stabilize, yet everything is still animated by an excited energy driving everyone forward as the body still feels good.

Then there is the fourth k, and that is where everything changes. At the halfway mark a runners mind undergoes a curious transformation as it divides into the rational mind and the animal mind. The rational mind knows that it is halfway through the race and its exertions are almost over, it just needs to stay the course and it will be fine. The animal mind by contrast reacts to the second half with terror and seeks only to end the pain, it will use any excuse to stop, whether by breaking focus or its most insidious weapon of all, whispers of doubt and deceit.

The battle between the two minds intensifies throughout the fifth and sixth k as the rational mind urges resolve and courage while the animal mind points out inadequacy and frustration. As pain both real and imagined increasingly seeps into consciousness, the balance between the two becomes ever more precarious and the true mettle of a runner is revealed in the struggle to forge onward.

The seventh k is where the battle is won or lost as everything comes to a head, the minds meet in a last furious clash to determine the outcome of the race, and a runner is made or broken by the victor.

And then it’s the home stretch, all cares are thrown to the wind as the last k stretches out and the culmination of so many weeks and months of hard work stands so close at hand.

As the runner enters the chute a final mental metamorphosis takes place as the rational mind departs entirely and only a crude animal instinct is left behind. This instinct has only one goal and that is to get across the finish line as fast as possible. It is a paranoid instinct, every shift of the light is a competitor trying to pass, every shouted name is an unseen threat riding up behind. With lungs burning, legs quivering, and heart pounding, every ounce of strength is put into getting over that line before anyone else. And then it’s over.

The area after the finish line is a strange land, filled with the peculiar mixture of heady victory and bitter defeat blanketed in a thick layer of exhaustion. Runners sit on the floor catching their breath or walk back to their teams drenched in sweat, all of them struggling to figure out what this means going forward. The cool down comes as a time for silent introspection or bombastic celebration in the afterglow of the race as teams make their rounds of the course and coax sore muscles into quiet.

At last it’s time to pack up and board buses and vans back to school. The race will soon fade into memory with some secure in the knowledge they will be back next year to try their luck again and others realizing that that was their last hurrah and they shall try no more. And so the cross-country race passes. Each one unique, yet still very much the same.