"On your marks, get set, bang." The official brings down the flag, and the gun goes off. Hundreds of runners funnel into the course, elbowing each other, trying to speed up and find a place in the pack, all the while hoping they don't fall or go out too fast. The nervous energy is almost tangible, and the adrenaline begins to kick in as the end of the first mile rapidly approaches. After this milestone, it's all training and endurance from here on out, using everything you've learned in practice to pass teams, run negative splits and keep a decent race pace. Time seems to slow down until you reach the last few meters of your race, and then it seems as though your kick happens all too fast, and you strive to pass that runner you've been battling, sprinting past the finish line and immediately stopping your watch to get your final time.
This is how we spend almost every single weekend during our season. Waking up at 5:30 on a Saturday to pile into vans, half asleep and yawning, shoving breakfast down our throats as fast as we can so that we can fall back asleep for a few more hours. Packing layers of clothes to keep us warm at meets so cold that we can see the snow fall as we run. Trying to laugh and joke around on our warm up and at the starting line so that our nervousness doesn't completely paralyze us. Triple knotting our spikes and taping the laces to our shoes because we've seen one too many runners wipe out, trip and fall, or lose their shoes completely at the beginning of a race.
Despite all of this, we love our sport. We live for the runner's high, the burn in our legs after running 10 miles on long run Sunday, the sense of pride we get after shaving off a couple of seconds in that last 800 in the workout. Running drives us; it keeps us in check with the rest of our lives. When we practice, nothing else in the entire world matters. That test you have tomorrow, the fight you and your boyfriend got in, the stress you're under at work, it all fades away. All you can focus on is picking up the pace, running one more mile, getting up the hill that seems more like a mountain or beating the teammate who has always been faster than you when you do 400 repeats.
It's no wonder, therefore, that our team isn't just another group of runners – it's a family. How else could we survive the 6 a.m. practices and the grueling workouts? The bond we've developed can never be broken, and it makes each one of us stronger. Both on and off the course, we're each other's main support system, whether our problems pertain to our sport, or schooling or our social lives. Knowing that there will always be someone there to push you at practice, make you smile early in the morning and cheer for you when you're having a bad race is great, but it's the connections we make outside of practice that really bring us closer together. Having a team that's more like a family means you always have a shoulder to cry on when your heart gets broken, a place to sleep when your roommate's boyfriend comes to stay for the weekend, a hug and a person to vent to when you're having a bad day and a group that's always down to do something fun and adventurous – no matter what time of night it is.
Looking back on it, it's not just the running we fall in love with – it's the experience as a whole. Even though cross country is considered an individual sport, we wouldn't be anywhere without our team behind us. The little inside jokes we have, the encouraging words, the prayers and chants before we race, the bond we all share – those are the things that make us enjoy what we do. People say we're crazy for running so many miles, for beating our bodies up day after day, for waking up at insane hours of the morning to get our run in before class. Personally, I say we're lucky because without our sport, we wouldn't have a family so strong that nothing could tear us apart.
