1. September 4, 2016
Fall Article 2
A Trip Down Memory Lane
When sweat gets in your eyes, it stings.
This is the first of many things my brain had forgotten and then remembered about
racing.
Last Friday night, the Drake Men and Women’s cross country teams competed in
their season opener at the University of Iowa. The race was shorter than the usual
distance, and most teams were using it as a “workout” to gauge the athlete’s current
fitness levels. For most runners, this was the first time in three or four months that
they had ran at race pace for a prolonged period of time.
The reality is, no matter how many times a coach tells their athletes to treat a race
like a workout, the inner-drive in each runner will eventually take over, and the
runner will end up racing the race. We love the competition—that is why we run
cross country, anyways. We like to beat people. We usually take advantage of each
race as best we can to improve and get faster.
So on Friday night, my teammates and I raced, and we experienced something of a
rebirth. The dust was blasted off our bones when the starter fired the gun. All of a
sudden, our legs were whipped into a speed they had almost forgotten about. Our
lungs were greeted by burning fire after a few minutes—an unpleasant visitor—and
our feet were once again shackled to the hundred pound bricks we tote around
during races. Our bodies were enduring the gutsy pain of the race, a pain they had
almost forgotten, and our brains remembered a few things for us in those moments:
There is no such thing as an easy race.
The pain associated with burning lungs is unique and scorches you every time until
you feel your entire body might quite possibly go ablaze.
The heaviness in your legs always greets you in the middle of the race, and that
voice in your head will tempt you over and over to slow down.
The finish line always looks way closer than it actually is.
Racing on grass and hills is really hard, which is probably why not very many people
do it.
When sweat gets in your eyes, it stings.

2. We aspire to get better each meet, and after each meet we will share one athlete’s
new best mark. This past meet was host to race distances shorter than usual,
rendering almost everyone a new PR, being their first (and/or only) time racing a 3k
or 6k in cross country. For this reason we will hold off on celebrating one individual
athlete until next week. #GetAnotherOne