Chapter 17

The next day started out fairly easy. My morning routine went smoothly and then it was off to school with Adam. I had a little bit of anxious energy as the morning went on though. I’m not really sure why, but for some reason I was a little nervous leading up to the meet we had later that day. It definitely wasn’t due to the expected competition from the other team, from what I’d gathered I could probably run with – if not beat – the lead runner from Highland. Thinking about it a little I think I was just anxious to see how I would do for the first meet and where my performance would put me compared to the rest of our team.

Once classes started though I had to put that to the back of my mind and focus on the actual lessons for the day. In English we were starting to go over essay writing and how to format a research paper. Sure, we’d all done a little writing before but not things were stepping up a bit as we’d have to do a longer research paper citing numerous sources for our material and following MLA standards. The rest of the day wasn’t much more exciting for classes. The one nice thing was that since the meet was at Highland I’d have to miss my last class so we could get down there, but it was PE anyway, so I wasn’t really missing out on much and definitely not anything I’d have to make up after the fact. I was definitely going to enjoy that, if it had been a different class I’d have to be getting notes from someone else and worrying about assignments after the meet.

Since we wouldn’t be using the locker rooms at the other school we all changed into our uniforms prior to going down. In our case the school colors were brown and gold. In our uniforms it translated out to being gold for the majority, white as a secondary, and then brown for the lettering. The uniform consisted of shorts and a t-shirt with a light warm up wind breaker that went over it. One difference from a normal workout was the racing flats most of us used. Racing flats were designed to have better traction for the different climates of running, including small rubber spikes on the bottom, though not like the metal spikes sprinters used. They were also more light weight and lower on the ankle.

As we loaded up onto the bus I had my walkman and headphones, settling into a chair and starting to listen to some music on the way. Music had always helped put my mind right, and in this case it got rid of the nervous energy I’d had earlier and got me focused and relaxed. The drive itself was about a half hour. One nice thing about the course was it was at a park in Salt Lake City and would be the same park where the state meet would be held at the end of the year. In order to not beat the park up though they used different routes for the regular season races then what they would for the state meet itself. That was also designed to not allow Highland to get an advantage of being able to run the state course numerous times before everyone else had the chance.

As we unloaded from the bus I was greeted by my grandparents waving from a little bit away. Unfortunately with my parents both teaching they couldn’t leave school early to go for a regular away meet, but both my grandparents had always made it a habit of showing up. The nice thing was they always brought a drink and some snacks for afterwards. Today was no different as I was handed a bag with a 32 ounce Gatorade and some orange slices. It had to be just a quick visit though because the coach was calling the guys team over.

“Listen up. Like I said yesterday, this isn’t a very good team. So today isn’t really a race. I want you treating it like a hard workout. The first half of the race I want you to let Highland set the pace – no one passes their lead runner. After the half way point you can go to a more normal pace if you are faster. Even doing that, I wouldn’t be surprised if we sweep the top spots today. I think we’ve got the potential to have a very good team this year, and I think this will be the first time you get to see how good you guys can actually be as a team against other competition. Just keep in mind, these guys are probably the weakest team we’ll face head-to-head.”