Why we were dead last at Nationals.
This story is fictitious and late for the sports challenge. Anyway enjoy it as it is.
It was my Sophomore year of College. We were a NCAA division 2 team from Texas. We had a great cross country team. We had won the southern regional meet the week before and we were competing in the National Cross country meet in Louisville Kentucky. The race was an out and out disaster. Our coach spoke with the media that came from our campus and made the following comment and left.
Congratulations to Adams State on another national championship. I would love to make excuses for our poor performance but I will just have to say it was not our day. We have the building blocks for another great year next season and we hope to add new talent as our recruiting for next season has been going well. Thank you very much.
The fact is that our best runner was 30
th
and the rest of us just finished somewhere in the last third of the field. Nationals is a crazy race. You can run the best time of your life and still not crack the top 50. I was about 95
th
in the race. Of the sixteen full teams represented, we were sixteenth.
So what happened? First it snowed. We are not that good in cold weather. We won the southern region. Adams State is in the mountains and they love snow. Second there were hills. Big hills. We are not that good on big hills. Our course in Texas is pretty flat. We actually did Ok on courses that had hills on them. Not as bad as we did today. We peaked early. Yes, peaking early is always a problem. You can look good in a meet run up to the meet you want to do your best.
But we were all flat today. There was nothing in anyone's legs. I can give you all the excuses in the world but the truth is.... It was last night.
Our coach ran into an old flame of his who is now coaching a woman's team from Indiana. They got talking about old times and since his wife wasn't there, the two of them disappeared. After dinner, we never saw him again until he checked our rooms at 2am. Yep, by 2am we should have all been asleep but we weren't. Bed check was scheduled for midnight. So we were terribly sleep deprived. On top of that, the girls team that we are talking about was also dead last in the Woman's meet. They hadn't won anything but they were third in their region. Should have been top ten at least. Midwest is a tough region.
So what happened after the coaches got distracted?
We ended up sitting in the bar of the hotel lobby both teams were staying in and we got a little tipsy. I started talking to a girl named Joy. She and I had similar backgrounds. She was a Sophomore and was a #5 runner for their team. 5'5" and thin as a rail. She couldn't have weighed more than 110lbs. B size breast. She was built to run. Almost every one of the girls on that team was built to run. Not more than 5% fat on a one of them. We weren't much better. If you are looking for muscle this is the wrong story to read. If you are looking for lean and mean, this is your story. Don't get me wrong, we are strong, but it wasn't in broad shoulders, six pack abs and bulging biceps.
I am 6'0" and 140 lbs of lean muscle. In the heat, I do well but in the cold. Forget it. Joy was just that. She was a joy to talk to. She claimed to love the snow and was really looking forward to the race in the morning. It was the first time for either of us to be at nationals. I was the #9 runner last season but was #6 this year. We had four seniors that were very good and a freshman that looked like he could take the individual title before graduation.
We talked about everything that night. I got her number and several of her socials and I was beginning to think that this was someone I could fall in love with.