Baby, we were born to run

I'm fresh back from Derby House, our pre-season training camp. What a blast we had! Despite the fact that I got almost no sleep, it was an amazing week in the Northeast Kingdom. It's rare that I have the opportunity to focus solely on running, so it was a great training week for me. The other benefit, of course, was time to bond with my team. I left camp feeling lucky to have such a talented and hardworking group of girls. It helps that they are also a blast to be around. Seems cross country girls don't change much through the years...

Cross country played an enormous role in my coming of age. Like most sports teams, we spent a lot of time together. With daily practice, twice weekly meets, and team dinners, we spent almost all of our free time together. It made sense, then, that we were also each other's closest friends. As often happens with cross country, we also spent Winter doing nordic skiing and Spring doing track. We went to Crystal Ball and Prom with the boys team. When we got bored of them, we took boys from Harwood's XC team. It should be no surprise, then, that on one night of Derby House, we had to have our "crush party" to note who our crushes were for the coming season. Turns out, coaches are not exempt from sharing that information. I think the girls were disappointed, but they'll live...

I left camp so excited for the fall. Even though my own racing will be mostly on hold, I get to spend my afternoons, Friday evenings and Saturdays with a great group of runners who make me laugh, challenge me and remind me how I started running in the first place.

Day 1, the last morning I would be well rested

Did you run cross country or track in high school? What were your favorite memories? Funny stories?

Run On.
S