There are few things that are simultaneously invigorating and horrifying. Preseason is one of them.
On the 21st of this month, I’ll be driving back down to the pristine and unmatched campus of Marist College and checking into Champagnat Hall with the rest of my teammates. It’s something I’ve looked forward to ever since I left school in the middle of May.
August 22nd is the start of preseason for the Marist College men’s cross country team, of which I’m a proud member. Every year going into preseason has been a wildly different experience for me. Sophomore year saw me delve into the world of competitive running for the first time. To say that preseason then was overwhelming is a severely drastic understatement that doesn’t begin to do my fear justice. I survived, but barely; here was a kid (yours truly) who was overweight for 17 of 19 years of his life at that point running daily with high school state champions, Junior Nationals participants and even a national high school champion. Let’s just say that first month was not the smoothest of transitions.
Junior year saw me out of shape compared to everyone again. I had a rough summer of training for personal reasons and only had one 60-mile week in me before I started. Through a miracle, I survived and performed well in preseason and throughout the entire cross-country season, adding a fancy 2-minute PR to my 8K time, which now stands at 28:29.
My plan this summer was to put in the heavy mileage early and be strong and ready to roll once late August came around. Strides were finally going to be a daily thing (as were drills), my long runs would be shorter but faster (in relation to my marathon training, of which I am most accustomed to), my workouts would be more intensive, and I’d be an unstoppable machine. And why wouldn’t I? After three-and-a-half months of marathon training, then getting an extra month to build up for summer compared to last year, there was no reason why I shouldn’t just be rolling through right now.
Well, it’s now August 3rd. My mileage has been significantly higher in relation to other summers. I’m already at 70 miles per week and didn’t hit that number until late September last year. I’m doing strides and drills when I can. My workouts are incomparable to those last summer. All should be great. If anything, I should be in the best shape of my life, or close to it.
Except that I’m still petrified of preseason.
Three years in a row, around this time, I begin to grow more and more anxious. I know I just wrote about how training by myself will eventually pay off for me this cross-countryseason, but that same fear of being good enough, doing enough, working hard enough is inescapable with preseason coming so soon.
The bitter, biting, inconvenient, name-your-cliché-here truth is this: I’m not a good cross country runner. In fact, I’m actually a pretty bad cross country runner, especially if you compare my times to those of myteammates.
Running with my teammates is a privilege because of their supreme talent. I’m thankful for the camaraderie, support and opportunity they give me to become better every day. Yet, being around such talented runners, and being a part of a Division I program and ascertaining the demands it brings, engenders its personal doubts. It’s no different than training for a marathon, half-marathon or any race you’re training for. The same mitigating questions linger in our brains and fester and pick at us menacingly as we get closer and closer to what we're training for. Is it overwhelming? You bet.
For preseason, I question whether I’m ready. Whether or not I’ve finally put in the requisite work to be a solid cross country runner and no longer be at the bottom of the pack during workouts and races remains a mystery.
I guess I’ll find out during preseason, impatiently waiting until then.
No comments:
Post a Comment