Because of how successful my freshman year was, I had high hopes, such as making varsity, for my sophomore year, but those hopes quickly became derailed. I had trained over the summer to make varsity, but ended up running junior varsity. Despite being disappointed by not making varsity, I was still happy to run junior varsity, but my season did not start well. Through my first two races, I was running times slower than freshman year; however, I began to find my stride after the second race and ran well at our third race of the season and appeared back on track to start running some personal bests. I …show more content…
I returned to running a week before our conference championships and everything about me felt worse, my calves, knees, quadriceps, lungs, while I was running. Despite having a painful week of practice, I still expected to be a top finisher in the JV race at the conference championships. The site of our conference championship is Lake Fairfax, a suburban park outside of DC full of hills and creeks and home to the most difficult cross country course I have run. Instead of being a top finisher, I had my worst race ever and was beaten by teammates who I had never lost to before. While running through the creeks and up the hills of Lake Fairfax, I had never been in more pain as I kept getting passed by teammate after teammate after teammate, each of whom had never beaten me