Current mood:	drained
Current music:	Green Day- Wake Me Up When September Ends

Confidence, Part 2
It was so hot today that just exhaling was a pain to do.

Today was the last 8k race of the season. Today was the day to determine everything- whether I'd ever get past a 34:21 this season, whether I'd ever beat Sean, whether Will would finally surpass me- everything. Everything, that is, in Chalkey's world of Cross Country season 2007. You know. It's a nice world, you should come visit sometime.

But I digress.

We left school at 10:00 A.M. to get to Ohio Wesleyan, the location of the All Ohio meet. There were varsity races for men and women, and then the open division that anyone could enter. I actually had a balding guy beat me in the kick today, which was really entertaining to see. He was wearing the singlet and short shorts and everything!

My race was the last one, the men open, at 4:15. So needless to say, I had plenty of time to prepare and worry my guts out over the race. Literally, guts everywhere. I think it was actually the heat, but I couldn't stop throwing up about two hours before the race. The whole incident went unnoticed with exception to Melissa, who was telling me to drop out. This was probably one of the few times I would actually contradict her- I just had too much on the line to try. I told her I was going to finish the race even if it killed me. Coach Rice, Melissa pointed out, would have wanted me to drop if he saw that. I told her that probably wouldn't have stopped me either.

Sean told me not to worry about the race too much. "It's a great day, and we're all healthy. Let's give it our best," he told me. I decided it was probably best not to tell him that he was standing where I threw up.

He also mentioned that Jeff was going to be injured- our perfect chance to catch up to him and beat him for once. About Jeff- Jeff's a good guy, but he's a little bit elitist. He has a problem with slower people running races in college, thinking this should be taken a little more seriously. I've heard him give flack about Melissa before, and I'm pretty sure he would have put me in that category- Sean too, if they didn't grow up together. So seeing a chance to beat him also made me feel a little better. I sarcastically told Sean that I was going to beat Jeff, and that he should too if he wanted to keep up. He laughed, and we went back to stretching.

Will had the audacity to stand in front of me in the starting box. Have I mentioned how little this guy works for where he is? There are still some days that Coach Rice favors this guy over me and tries to push him harder, which never ceases to infuriate me. I've never let him beat me before, I told myself. Why start now? I had to hold down a little bit of vomit as the gun went off, but I managed to get over my sickness once I got into my race pace. Will fought with me and even passed me for a little while, but I shook him off like a bad scab somewhere after the first mile.

Sean and I were neck and neck for the first three miles, which greatly benefitted my times. My times were about 6:15, 6:15, 7:00 at that point (with 7:00 being my normal mile pace at the beginning of this year). I started to wonder if I could keep up the pace- I was getting really tired, and the heat was becoming unbearable. I heard that it was at 87 degrees when we started, and that was with the sun behind the clouds for a moment (the woman who told me this went on a tangent afterwards about global warming). I was starting to decide that I should fall back in the interest of not DNFing or passing out, when Sean and I turned a corner and saw Jeff huffing and puffing right in front of us. I gave a breathless "Now's our chance!" to Sean, and then I started to speed up.

I could tell that Jeff's pride was hurting, because he sprinted ahead of me as we crossed the four mile mark. For some reason, I refused to let go- I didn't care if I died trying, I wanted to beat him. I wanted to win one for Melissa and myself, and maybe earn some respect for once. Eventually, I lost him on a hill and then just took off, knowing that I needed a good head start if I wanted to beat him to the finish line. Jeff could easily take me in a flat course, but he takes to hills like a wall- especially when his knee is injured. After a series of hills, I finally shook him off enough to recover the rest of the way to the finish line.

When I crossed the line at 33:40, I kept going and hid behind an ambulance, where I could resume throwing up. The gagging reflex didn't go away when I emptied myself, which was a little bit of a scary feeling. I saw Jeff come into the finish line on my way there- and to my surprise, Sean was behind him! I had completely forgotten that he wasn't with me- my mind kind of shut him out when Jeff and I started fighting for place. Will came in last, with a time of 36:00.

There were a million reasons why the team did not do what it did last Friday. The course was more difficult. The heat was dramatically worse. There was much more competition, forcing times to be fixed with the stampede. But none of these reasons could explain why I PRed by forty seconds and beat Sean...

I put my mind to rest thinking of Coach's old confidence talks, and a line from some cliche movie: "Courage is not the absence of fear, but the presence, and the will to go on anyways."

For some reason, I started to laugh. I guess I needed a good laugh after all that today put me through.

Maybe it was the serious lack of substance in my system, maybe it was the runner's high, maybe it was the heat- but for whatever reason, I couldn't stop laughing the rest of the evening.

until next time,
Chalkey