“Before every race, my dad sends me a picture of Steve Prefontaine and a quote of Steve Prefontaine’s,” one of these runners said. “So I’ll get a text from him the day of every race, and it’s been happening since I was in second grade.”
XC season is totally back.
“There was this kid on our cross-country team my freshman year, and he was really slow, but we all really liked him a lot. He was really quiet, a really hard worker. One race, it was the hardest race of the season—Fremont’s course—he fainted a mile into the race, but he got up and kept running. And then it happened again, and he kept running. It happened another time—he fainted and kept running. He finished the race in like 35 minutes. He fainted three times and still finished the race. We were all just in awe. We just couldn’t believe it. That was super inspirational.”
Right: “I’m much more of a veteran now, like I understand pacing. The first year, I didn’t know how to pace. I just went out full speed ahead and just hoped for the best and tried to cling on. But now I understand that pacing is a big importance. You gotta distribute it, you know?”
“I go out by myself sometimes [on easy runs], and I’m just thinking through my mind like, ‘Why am I running? What keeps me going for this?’ I’m still really unsure about it. It’s weird—a weird feeling. But I like it. I like running, but at the same time, I don’t. It’s back and forth, like yin-yang. That’s what running is.”
Hooray Run 