Describe your first HS race

Too busy looking at all of the ladies in tights and bun huggers.

Freshman year XC. Out for ~3 weeks with a broken collarbone from August 1-August ~20th. Started workouts the last week of August and ran first race the second week of September.

Forgot racing flats so had to wear trainers. Coach told me not to go out too fast, but he thought I could be in the top 5. Went out right behind our 6th guy the first mile then noticed everyone around me was breathing hard. Decided to move up to our next guy by mile 2. Same thing, I felt like I could move up more. By the end of the race I caught up with our 3rd guy and ran the same time as him, I think 18:4X.

Before that, the longest I had actually raced was 1600s on the track so it was quite longer than I was expecting, but it was a lot more fun running on an XC course compared to the track. By the end of the season I ran 17:20s, and improved to 15:50s by the end of SR year.

Round Barn wrote:

Ill start.

Indoor 600m, 1:38

I wasnt nervous at all, I didn't care about track but coach said I had potential. Still depressed about soccer tryouts. Four years later ran 1:54.

That's too bad you regressed so much in four years. If you're young keep on trying, you can still improve.

fakfklasdfjlk wrote:

Round Barn wrote:

Ill start.

Indoor 600m, 1:38

I wasnt nervous at all, I didn't care about track but coach said I had potential. Still depressed about soccer tryouts. Four years later ran 1:54.

That's too bad you regressed so much in four years. If you're young keep on trying, you can still improve.

Its sad that on this site I'm not even sure if you're joking

Freshman year of track. Indoor 800. I was one of the slowest on the team but there was one guy who I was pretty sure I could beat. Went out way too hard and slowed down a lot. Looked behind me in the last 50 meters to make sure that he wasn't gonna beat me and then eased up once I knew I beat him. Got second to last in 2:33.

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Cross country in 9th grade. I ran 34:57 for 5k. I was 230 pounds. 9 months later I was 145 pounds and running 19:00. The next year I was running 18:00 and 5:00 mile. Then progression started to slow down a lot and I really started hating running.

Cross country in 9th grade I ran 34:57 for 5k. I was 230 pounds. 9 months later I was 145 pounds and breaking 20:00. The next year I was running 18:00 and 5:00 mile. By 11th grade I was running low-to-mid 17:00 and made it to the state championship in XC. Then progression started to slow down a lot and I really started to hate running. I am now 21 and haven't run a race since my senior year of high school.

Now I realize how impressive it was that I was able to even get that "fast." A lot of fat people get skinny. Very few people that fat get that skinny and are able to run a mile under 5:00 that quickly.

broke all my fingers playing basketball. showed up for XC in walmart tennis shoes and basketball shorts and ran 22:30 on the first day time trial, probably the worst i've ever felt running. 3 months later ran 18:30, next year ran 16:30. gotta say 16:30 felt a lot easier than that untrained 22:30.

3 mile XC course over hilly course in August heat. Ran 19 something and felt awful. Dipped under 18 on same course 6 weeks later. Got down to 17 low on flat courses and finished well at conference, regionals, and sectionals.

5k XC, Freshman HS

22 years ago.

Two months before, I didn't know what cross country was. My elementary school didn't have track or XC. I always knew I'd run track when I got to HS, but this XC thing was a mystery to me. I went to an open house at the HS over the summer, met the head coach of both XC and track. I told him how excited I was to run track, and he told me I had to come out and run cross. Said it was "just like track."

A few days later, I showed up for a summer practice. Ran 5 miles in high tops. Looking back, I don't remember wanting to quit. Surprising, given how shocked I was that this was nothing like my impression of what track was supposed to be.

We had a really great varsity team, particularly our #1. We also had a pretty good freshman on the team, Ed. Guys were placing bets between Ed and me for fastest freshman at the first meet.

Going into the meet, I was psyched to see the varsity guys run. And definitely caught up in the fastest freshman thing. The things I remember most are standing on the starting line of the JV race. 100+ guys lined up shoulder to shoulder. I'd never seen anything like that before. Wondered how so many would fit on the course all at the same time.

After that I just remember pain. So much pain. A stupid hill we did twice. I went out too fast in every race as a freshman. I remember moving so slowly after 3k. I knew Ed was way ahead. I finished in disbelief of how much it sucked and how bad I felt. I ran 19:39. Ed ran in the 17:30's. Coach said little to me besides, "You're faster than that."

He was right. I ended up having a really nice HS career. I was much better at track, but had and still to this day, have a deep love for cross country. My coach is an amazing guy who I've always looked up to, and see far too little of these days. Fond memories, those days.

Xc was a run of the mill 2 mile frosh soph race. Pretty slow 12:34, 20th place or something.

Track was a 1600m. One of those big invites where they rank you by time and put you into the most appropriate heat. Since I had never run a mile race I was in the first(slowest) heat with all of the 5:30+ guys along with all of the NT guys. I led from the gun finishing in 5:14. 2nd place was 5:32. There were a lot of angry parents wondering why I was in the race against their slow children. One of the few races I won in high school.

It was a JV race, first meet of the XC season my freshman year. It was approximately a 3k course. (It was the type of course which I soon found I hated, courses which are inaccurate...this was supposed to be a 2-mile race.) Anyway, it was a really exciting race for me. I started out near the front, not really knowing what to expect. By the mile I was in 3rd or 4th, but pretty quickly I passed those people and I led the rest of the race and won in like 10:38 or something. Ran 18:33 for 5k that year...never ran JV again in high school, and though I didn't improve my sophomore year and got worse my junior and senior year. I still remember the excitement of winning my first race ever. It was an awesome experience, even if it was only JV. :)

2-mile in invitational at a public park. It was grouped so that there was a single boys race and a single girls race. The point was for the coaches to find out who would run varsity, JV, etc. later in the season. The course was on a large, open prairie grass area with a few moderate hills. I remember being pretty nervous and not knowing what to expect since I had only run two races before in middle school. I had also had really bad shin splints and knee pain the last week or so, and I wasn't sure if that would hold me back. I ran a pretty lackluster race in 14:21 to finish exactly in the middle of a 140-man field. At the time I thought it was an okay time since I was the fastest freshman from my school, and the slowest was running 12-minute miles. Looking back, though, I really sucked last year and only ran a crappy 21:43 for the 5k. This year I'm hoping to go sub-19.

First high school race was the xc season opener on a notoriously hilly/difficult course. As a frosh I was probably our 3rd or 4th best guy at the start of the season but my coach had a rule that returning runners ran varsity to start and new guys had to run JV and earn their way into the top 7.

I ran out front for the entire race, and got pointed in the wrong direction by some clueless race official. Ended up running an extra 1k loop that wasn't part of the course and finishing in 22-23 minutes buried in the results. After that there was some message board chatter about how this freshman from xxxxx who was supposed to be good was so overrated, etc., etc.

2 weeks later I got 5th in my state's first big invitational of the season and beat several guys who were top 10 at the state meet the year before. Still one of the most satisfying races I have ever run.

8th grade track:

I played baseball up until the summer before 8th grade and all of my friends said that I should run. My first real race was a 1600m, and I ran my first lap in 72 seconds before slowing down drastically to win in 5:35. I remember not knowing which line was the finish line, so I kicked it in all the way through the handoff zone (zone start and end and finish line were all just white lines on a cinder track.) I ended up running 9:32 for 3200m by the end of my senior year of HS.

4k JV race in a huge invitational at Van Cortlandt Park.

Sprinted to the front in the first 100 meters like an idiot, and was completely cooked midway through the cowpath. I was in more pain in the back hills than I've suffered in any race since, and the only thing I could focus on was refusing to let myself walk. I promised myself that I would cross the line running the whole way, then I would quit the team. I expected to come in slower than 20 minutes, but my time ended up being 17:45, which met my coach's prerace goal for me of sub-18. That, combined with the endorphins that kicked in after the race, was enough for me to give it another shot.

First XC race my freshman year. Trained all summer so I was in pretty good shape. At 5'4 and sub 100lbs I was a extremely skinny and small freshman.

Our first race was at a very hilly with a lot of the course on single track trails. I came through the first mile in around 20th and by the second mile up to around 10th. The last 800m of the race started with a steep downhill out of the woods, then around the soccer fields then to the finish. I ended up passing five of my teammates and 2 others and ended up finishing one second behind second and five behind 1st. 18:37.

Sophomore year Xc; 2 mile (first race)

First time running, no training what so ever during the summer.

This coarse was hilly AF! My only motivation to finish was the fact that i will quit Xc right after the race.

It hurt soo bad i had to stop @mile 1 to catch my breath but i continued & finished the race. 11:56.

Incase you're wondering i didn't quit Xc, later that year i ran 17:45 5k & by senior year i ran 15:55 5k.