Park City Girls Are Buff

Hey there people of Earth (a.k.a who ever is reading this) My goal was to post regularly, but this blog does count as a grade for my english class. So I am going to be posting this today so I can focus on quarter finals. Yippee (note sarcasm) Okay now we can get to what this post is actually about . . . CROSS COUNTRY! Don’t worry I'm not posting this to rub it that I'm athletic, but in case you're wondering. HA I'm athletic! (sorry I just had to.) The real reason I'm writing this because I've found something I love and am proud of myself for all I've done. I thought that by sharing about it I could encourage some people to get out and find something that they love to do. Now that we all understand, let's begin :).

Aysia holding up a broken fork at our
after practice snack.

I'm going to start this by saying I only started running about five months ago. It was the end of eighth grade and the cross country team was talking to students about joining. My friends talked me into going to the meeting at our school. After the meeting I decided I would join over the summer. And then the journey began.

The first xc practice was at the team captain, Claire Breiholtz, house. You could either go two or four miles. Being smart I chose to go two. This was a hard run for me and I was one of the slowest girls. I was self conscious, but everyone on the team was super supportive! I went home that night motivated to work hard. I started summer training the first Monday of summer. Here is a quick idea of the basic training schedule for cross country. Mondays are long runs, Wednesday are hard speed workouts, Fridays varied, and then Tuesdays and Thursdays were easy days. My long runs started out as four miles, easy days were two miles and I was slow at intervals. At the end of the summer my long runs were six miles, easy days were four miles and I was faster at intervals. It was unbelievable how much I'd improved.

Selfie after the first race. (I am a
little ashamed. . .)

My first race was on the first day of school. I know terrifying, right. I was horrified and was so worried that I would be the slowest. The race day came; I was petrified. I remember the start of the race in great detail. All the different teams gathered at the starting line. Our team did our cheer for the first time. We but all of our hands in and scream "PARK CITY GIRLS ARE BUFF HUH!" I saw the man with the gun walk out on to the field. I thought I might pee myself. (I almost did.) The man put his arm up slowly. I knew he was going to pull it any second. My heart was pounding in my chest. After what felt like forever, but was really only a matter of seconds, the man fired the gun and we were off. 

 

I could never describe to you the exact feeling of what it is like to run in a race. You feeling like you are going to die but you want to run super fast. You are mentally and physically tired. That first race was horrible. It was hot, there was a huge hill, and it felt like it went on forever. It was all a blur. I just remember seeing the finish line and I trying as hard as I could to sprint the last 100m. I remember crossing the finish line, my legs instantly felt like jello and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I got my time, 35:51 minutes. I was so happy! I thought I would get over forty minutes. It was one of the hardest but greatest days of my life. 

Park City Cross Country Freshman girls after Region race.
 From left to right: Hailee, Savannah, Chloe, Alana, Kirsten, 
Aysia, Claire, Maddie, Me, and River.

Getting to a more recent update on my racing career. The season is now over for me. I went to region and that is as far as I will get this year. (State is only for the top seven runners.) The last race was intense. I felt huge pressure to get a PR. I will not go into extreme detail about the race, but I will tell you that I did get my final PR for the season. I ran a 5k in 26:33 minutes. (Final times for all of PCXC) I dropped a total of nine minutes and eighteen seconds. This is a major improvement. I am very proud of this. Cross country has made me happier and has given me so many new opportunities. I've made new friends and they mean the world to me. I am so happy we are all friends! Overall cross country has completely changed my life for the better. I just felt the need to share my story and I hope you enjoyed. Until next time.

- Morgan <3 :)