Canton

The second race is Saturday.  Canton is the first race where there is a separate FROSH-SOPH race preceding the varsity race. The canton invite. Coach has me running frosh/soph along with Hans Logrotto and Justin Poynter and the rest of the unfledged frosh. we picked up on Fee day.  The Varsity race is competitive. There are thirty schools.There are teams from Country school I have never heard of before.  Olympia and Porta and Jacksonville. 

“Just don’t start off too fast.” Coach caveats.“You can beat most of these runners but a lot of them you have never seen before and a lot of them are young cross-country runners who will just take off spring like there is no tomorrow. Just hang back til the last mile and make your move.

The gun sounds more like a snort and less like a crackle in the 

 I take off with the lead pack. Half mile in I vie for the lead. Beano yells me not top be a rabbit. I feel I can take these guys. They are my age or one year older in school. I have been busting my ass all summer. I run like I have been running all summer. Hard. Digging into the course, watching asterisks of earth flail behind my cleats.I am pushing myself. All I can think about is the course record at Manual. All I can think about is how I got off track last Tuesday and failed.

It is an arduous course. Part of it seems to be a golf course with atolls. Part of it is hills and we run next to a wooden area.  It is all junior varsity. Kids who are my age or one year older.

I pull ahead.

At the mile mark I am in the lead.

 We continue to push. Three people who were next to me slightly fall back.  I took the first mile too fast.

I can hear my mom yelling Go Manual from the sidelines.  I keep falling back. I don’t know what is happening. Teams that are running together are passing me. By the second mile mark I am 20 seconds behind the lead and am twelfth. There are 150 kids in the race.  I wish I would have played it cool the first mile.  At 1200 meters left I start picking out the runners in front of me one by one. There is a pain akin to dehydration welling in my abdomen. It feels like it is trying to cough one second and give birth the next.  I am pushing. With 400 meters left I catch three more. It is apparent I won’t finish in the top six but if I fight I can make it in the top ten. I run neck and neck with a kid Olympia at the finish line.  My time is just under 18 minutes.  Coach is writing down mile splits with his perfect handwriting. He seems pleased. He tells me good run. I  hang my head down.

I feel like I have failed.