The Beginning

I woke up at 6:55 this morning, five minutes before my alarm. Looking up at the red digital numbers, I moaned silently and turned the thing off before it could scream like a banshee and force me to get out of bed. I laid back down and seriously considered returning to my dreams-my head was throbbing from the day before, the result of a year's worth of sleep debt accumulated over the summer. I rested it on the pillow. Just a couple more minutes I thought. Then I remembered. Pike Lake today. We were leaving at 7:30. I pushed aside my drowsiness and clambered out of bed. 15 minutes later I was at the CUW field house, sitting with my teammates and awaiting the bus that would drive us to the hilly, wooded park for cross country practice.

There's something about the woods that's always intrigued me. Maybe it's the lack of vision in the trees, the sense of adventure that lurks amidst the seemingly endless trails and fallen branches. As a kid I dreamed of playing capture the flag under the shelter of the canopy, building treehouses and hiking through the wilderness for hours. Normally I wouldn't be all that excited to go to practice at 7:30 in the morning, but if it means running around in the forest for an hour I literally jump at the opportunity.

The morning's practice itself wasn't anything particularly extraordinary. Once we'd arrived at the lake Coach Russ gave his usual hill running speech, reminding us to watch our step and maintain proper form. Something about cadence and effort percentages. After that we set out. Most of us did 2 loops on the 4 mile trail, a total of 8 miles. The first lap was quite enjoyable. About 1 minute into the woods I felt the urge to scream "Find the halflings!" as Andy Pfeuffer, Andy Ashenden, Ben Paper, Richard Thompson, and myself tore up the first hill. It's my favorite quote from Lord of the Rings. In fact, I can hardly help from shouting this phrase at some point whenever I run in the woods. As the trees whoosh by on either side I often find myself wishing that I was an Uruk-hai relentlessly chasing hobbits.

Towards the end of the first loop I managed to roll my ankle twice within about 10 seconds. This tweaked one of the tendons on the side of my calf badly enough that I needed ice later. I "rubbed some dirt on it" and kept going. The second loop was a bit more tiring. Ben, Richard, and Ashenden were too fast so I found myself left behind with Pfeuffer, who's quickly becoming somewhat of a wingman. We passed Russ at one point in the middle of the hills (he shouted out some technical instructions about the pace and all that) and later caught up to Sam Huff. The rest of the run was uneventful except for Pfeuffer taking a wrong turn. Afterwards we stretched, iced our wounds and boarded the bus for home.

Later that afternoon we had a team meeting about sport psychology. The mental aspect. This culminated in Russ's infamous "monster discussion," the speech in which he speaks about training your inner monster and letting it out to battle for you. Images of Pokemon flashed through my mind as Russ imparted his wisdom. You see, running is hard. It's painful. And sometimes the only way to inspire yourself to go faster-thereby experiencing more pain-is to get angry. During a race you need to feel the hunger that can only be satisfied by passing your opponents. And every opponent passed intensifies the desire for more. Thus, in order to become better competitors we must all learn to feed, train, release, and ultimately control that monster. Whether you're an Uruk-hai chasing halflings or Godzilla terrorizing Tokyo, at some point you just need to get ugly, mean, and terrifying.

This is a story about finding monsters.