My third cross country meet. I was nervous as hell and preparing for my race. My team started warm up, getting our muscles loose, then a team stretch. We finished up as someone called for the ladies in division three to get ready. Everyone lined up by teams and did last minute stretching. A guy with a loud speaker came out in front of everyone and told us how we would start, warning call, and then the cannon. I tried to prepare myself more, rolled my neck around and jumped a few times then got ready for the cannon to fire.

CRACK! Warning shot. Everyone tensed, then, BOOM! The cannon fired and we sped off. At first it was pretty packed, but everyone soon started to spread out after the first turn into the forest. I stayed with the middle pack of girls, keeping a good pace, but still fast and at race pace. This race was only a 1.5mile course, so we had to do it twice. Going into the woods it was cool and shady, good running condition. It was hard not to bump into the other girls and keep up at the same time; everyone was fighting to get ahead of someone. As we emerged out of the woods into the hot summer day we all had a little more room to run. I had made friends with some of these girls before our race, now we were enemies, fighting for that medal.

We passed the starting line again, final lap around the course. I sped up a little, passing two girls from Owaso. Into the forest again, around the winding paths and tree roots. In the forest I came up to another girl, and stayed about 10ft behind her, she was going about the same pace as me now. As we emerged out of the forest I could see the finish line, they raised the banner and we all headed towards it. I strained and pushed my legs to carry me faster, to beat this girl. I put in my all. The ropes lining the path to the finish were now covered in brightly colored flags. I held my chin up pushing myself hard to finish this in good time.

“Finish” was all I could see, all I could read. I concentrated hard on that banner as I pushed myself to go faster, running on the tips of my toes trying to catch the girl in front of me. I glanced over towards the clock and it read 24:06.

Yes! I’m beating my time!

The whole season I couldn’t break 25 minutes, now I’m finally doing it. I saw people on the side lines, parents waving their hands, coaches screaming at their girls to catch the girl in front of them. I put my last ounce of energy to get past this girl from our rival team and crossed the finish line. I stumble down the path to turn in my running ID breathing hard. The ticket lady smiled, handed me a popsicle and I headed out to be with the rest of my team. My coach congratulated me on my time as I gulped down a Gatorade.

After everyone finished, our team went over to the awards stand. All teams were chatting amongst each other hoping they would get 1st or 2nd place. Only 1st and 2nd get trophies. Every ones attention was turned towards the stage as the guy who had the loudspeaker earlier tapped a microphone. 3rd place… was us. 2nd place…Ithica. And finally, 1st place went to Owaso. It was a good meet, and we lost 2nd place by two points. Next time, we’ll take ‘em down.