Seeing the results and hearing everything about NXN 2010 has brought back many memories and made me realize how deeply affected I was by my experience there in 2008. It was certainly not the best race of my life, but it was definitely the most memorable. My hopes of placing highly in the race were shot when, in the first 200m, I tripped and fell to the bottom of a pileup with what I think was most of the Saratoga team. Two years later, I still have the scars and bloody pictures to show for it, but it makes a tremendously fun story to tell.
Even though my race was much less than perfect, that did not dampen the experience whatsoever. Meeting and listening to the elite runners who spent the weekend there is what really changed my entire outlook on competitive running.
One night at dinner, I looked over and saw Kara Goucher enter the room. I couldn't have been more excited to see my running idol in person. Pretty soon my table and the whole room was buzzing about her. As it became apparent that she was about to walk by my table, the only thing I could think of was how awesome it would be if she would just sit with us for a few moments. Far to shy to ask her myself, I begged one of the boys at my table to try to call her over.
One of them eventually did. At first she looked torn - I think she had somewhere she was supposed to be. But then, just as I was thinking it had been a long shot anyways, she pulled up a chair and sat down! I had only been hoping for a couple of minutes, but she sat and talked with us for a about 45 minutes. Even though we were bombarding her with questions that I'm sure she had been asked hundreds of times before, she never let on to be bored and it was definitely the most interesting conversation of my life.
Previously, I had always thought that she had just floated to the top, winning races everywhere she went. High School phenom to NCAA Champion to World Bronze Medalist. It was the first time I realized that being elite doesn't mean having a perfect career.
Throughout High School I always had this feeling that I wasn't really all that great, and that every time I won a race or PR'd it was just a fluke. I had the curse of being pretty darn good right off the bad as a freshman. My sophomore year, I really hit some breakthroughs. I was beating older girls who had been freshman phenoms in their day only to slip off the radar as they got older. I never thought that would happen to me too, that is until it did. Sitting at that table that night, I was still licking my wounds from my disaster of a junior year. That slump-year sucked all the confidence right out of me. Even though I make a remarkable senior year comeback, I still believed that making it to NXN was the biggest fluke of my life. I thought I'd better soak it up because this was as good as it was going to get for me.
So then I decided to ask her, how do I know that I'm good enough? What's the point in trying if I'm not even talented enough to make it? She looked me straight in the eye and said that if I loved it and I had already made it this far, I have what it takes to make it as far as I want to go.
I'll never forget that moment. My running can only be described as a bumpy roller coaster ride and I always seem to be in the best of shape when it counts the least and the worst of shape when it counts the most. However, whenever I'm down I just look up at my dorm room wall where my signed poster of her hangs reading "always believe" and I think back on that moment. That gives me all the motivation I need to head out for a run.
Even though I am currently on comeback number...wait...I lost count...because of her i still have the probably irrational belief that I can make it as far as I am willing to go in running. So, to the people at NXN, if you ever wonder how much the elite athletes' presence affects the high schoolers, know that for me it made the difference and continues to make the difference between leaving the sport forever and never giving up on it.
This is my thank-you to all of the people that make NXN happen, to all of the elite athletes that go, and especially to Kara Goucher for making me believe.