High School xc Stories

At a meet I once went to the 1st mile was 3 inches of mud. As soon as we hit the mud, at least 30-40 people started losing their spikes. Funniest thing I've ever seen, but pretty scary seeing spiky balls of mud flying everywhere.

Metro championship. Not in greatest part of town. Last race of the season. Course went across drainage ditches that were wet so burlap sacks were used to help footing. I was in first place by about 5ish seconds and went over one of the drainage ditches. When I stepped on the burlap sack it felt like there was a solid stump inside the bag. As soon as I took my next stride off the bag a homeless man hopped out of the bag and started chasing me. This helped me pull away from the pack by a lot as I was freaked out and gave me a burst of adrenaline, and the group behind had to go through the muddy ditch without the sack. My last mile was 20sec faster than both of the first two. To make it even more creepy I think I saw the same standing at a distance smiling while I received my medal on the podium. To this day whenever my team runs this course or passes this park on the highway we always recall the burlap sack man.

Were you wearing long spikes?

Yeah kinda felt bad for the dude cause I woke him up and he was obviously cold but then he kinda freaked me out so yeah. Yeah long spikes but sack was thick

My junior year we had the best boys cross country team our school had had in years. We hadn't won city in over half a century and we had a chance this year. All of our 5 scorers caught at least 1 person in the last 100m, and one guy caught 4. 3 of our 7 guys threw up in the chute after the race, and another guy passed out across the line. We won by 1 point. We all started crying and mobbed our coach when we found out we won, it was really an incredible moment. I have never before or since seen all 7 guys lay it on the line the way we did.

Not high school, but I was running in the college regional where the kid got trucked by a deer, I was a bit ahead of the spot where it happened, but was still able to see kinda what played out as the course was pretty open over fields. Dude just got up and kept running, nobody could believe it really haha

I was in 9th grade in 1973, back then we ran modified in NY State.

It was a 1.1 mile race. The course went about 600 meters and entered this kind of rolling hill area for 900 meters then a sprint to the finish.

Entering the hills was a very deep hole filled with water from recent rains.

I was in the lead, running side by side with a kid.

He, apparently didn't know how deep the hole was and stepped in it.

It was about knee deep and his leg bent the wrong way when it hit the outer end of the hole.

His blood curdling scream was horrifying.

He ended up breaking his leg at the knee.

That was 45 years ago and I'll never forget.