My story is no where near done as I still have senior year of hs, 4 years of college, and countless years as a sub-elite ahead of me but this thread is really awesome so why not?
Episode 1: the begging
time line: middle school
In elementary school, 1st-3rd grade to be specific, I vaguely remember trying out for many sports like b-ball, soccer, and maybe football to. Point is I was awful at all of them and didn't enjoy any of them. I was not an athlete at all but one thing I enjoyed was playing tag with my friends at recess and running in gym class. I was never to good at it (i'm still right around average haha). I think about 5 days before 6th grade began my friend Brendan, who had ran for a club team, said for to me join our middle school's cross-country team. I don't why I said yes but I did.
I remember only two races as a crosby cougar; the state championship for xc 6th grade, and my only sub 7 mile in ms 8th grade more on these races later. Training was weird we never did workouts really, we just did easy runs and played capture the flag and sometimes did time trials. I remember there was group of like 6-8 guys who were crazy good (or so I thought) and there was no way I would ever be as fast as them so I just hung out with Brendan. In Kentucky even if you sucked, I did, you got to run at the middle school state meet. I vividly remember finishing like 500th at state and walking back from the car telling my mom "this was the sport for me". 8th grade my last race of track (didn't make state) I wanted to run sub 7 in the mile really bad "what is your current pr?" said Brendan, "I have no clue" I said. So I went through the 800 in 3:27 right on Brendan's shoulder then summoned up a big kick with 600 to go to run 6:48
I never really trained that seriously or cared about my races in MS but for some reason Feb 13th of my 8th grade year I decided to watch the whole oly trials marathon. I was hooked I made the decision that second that somehow I would run in the olympic trials marathon one day. The summer before 9th grade I trained really hard and really cared about my running. I was going to Eastern High School one of the best teams in KY so I knew I could run well maybe even sub 6 by 12th grade. I had no idea...