When I first started high school I was forced to get involved in a few things. My parents forced me to do cross country. I was not a big fan of the idea at first but forcing me to cross country led to one of the biggest triumphs in my life. I didn't really want to do cross country, but i went out and gave it my all. Throughout, my freshman year I became a much improved runner, however my sophomore year I took the next step in cross country I was more determined than ever before. When the year first started I had not lost a step. I was running the same times I ended my freshman year with. My freshman year really pushed me and showed me my true potential. I was determined to get better however. Throughout, the weeks I worked really hard at practices and pushed myself to run with the upperclassmen. I was determined to break my best time from last year. I ran many meets and finally broke my time but I did not feel completely accomplished yet. By the end of the year our coach let the team know that 10 guys would be able to run the district meet. I had cracked the top 10 on my team. When I first found out i had made the district roster I was very excited. All my hard work I had put into this season finally worked. I felt very accomplished and honestly excited. But as the meet inched closer I became overwhelmingly nervous. Finally, the day had come and the district meet was here. I was able to skip school for the meet which was nice, but I woke up very nervous for the meet my whole body felt nauseous. My head felt really big and my whole body had the butterflies. I knew at that moment it was going to be a long race. When I arrived at the meet I began to run and practice with my team and the nerves went away.The race was at a park and was two laps around the lake that was in the center of the park. The path we had to follow was mostly sandy with some gravel. There were also trees around the side of the path to offer shade. The course was also mostly flat. We had started heading to the start line and teams were getting ready to go. Several teams had chants to hype up the team others got in circles and prayed. My team did none of this and just stood at the starting line. Then became race time. It was my first varsity race ever and I was not ready. The gunshot, and the race was off. When the gun first fired I flinched and switched into gear. Starting the race is always a fun part because your adrenaline always kicks in. The path that the course was on was not very wide and a lot of the runners got trapped in between one another. This was not the first time it happened to me. When the race first started a tree branch was pulled back by another runner, and when he let the branch go it smacked me square in the face. The branch did not phase me however, and I kept on running. I was never great at pacing myself when I ran. My first mile time was right around 6 minutes. I was feeling pretty good and I felt determined to keep that pace. As I ran around the course i ran into my coach. My coach told me to keep up the pace. He was pretty surprised to see how well i was doing. I then put all my focus into finishing the race as hard as I possibly could. At this point in any cross country race I always tried to be preoccupied with my thoughts to keep my mind off of my physical exhaustion. I slowly started to feel cramped and began to slow up. Cramps can often hurt your time and almost make you feel as if you could not finish the race. This was usually because it happens to every runner. It’s something you just have to embrace and move on from when you run. I worked through the pain. When I finally made the final turn of the course i saw the race clock. I was stunned i was about to beat my best time by over a minute. When I finished I had never felt better in my entire life. Later that day our coach sent out an email about the meet and next to my name and time in parentheses he had the word “WOW”. Nothing in my life has felt better than that. Cross country was never really a sport I enjoyed doing but i learned a ton from being a participant in the sport. The experience was proof to me that all the work over the season had finally paid off. This experience pushes me still to this day because I know if I put in the work I can accomplish all the things I put my mind to. This experience kept me doing cross country for the next two years. Unfortunately, my last two years ended with me getting hurt and losing most of my progress. Overall, I do not really miss the sport, but that moment is engraved in my mind till the day I die.