Cross Country

Well, I assume the first question to come to mind is: what is cross country? Unless, of course, you are on cross country. In this case, you are knowingly nodding your head, wondering how I will explain it to people who don't understand. The truth is, it is impossible to understand, even to most people who are on it. Oh, the logistics of the sport (it IS a sport...) are easy enough. Teams race over 2.5-3.1 miles of hilly, muddy, grassy, rocky "cross country" turrain. It is scored by adding up the points of the places of the first five runners, with numbers six and seven as displacers, and the lowest score wins. However, the underlying fundamentals of the sport are nearly incomprehensible. First of all, it is very difficult for most people to believe that we actually enjoy tthe daily 3-5 mile runs, with occasional 10 mile long-runs. Also incomprehensible to those outside is the utter zaniness of it; the joy of having people who will arise before the sun to hike out to some remote hillside, argue about how big the moon really is, dodge through backyards sprinkled with "NO TRESPASSING" signs, suffer through speedwork at the Cove (with dice!?!) and basically just giggle at the hilarity of life and our place in it. Yes, all cross country runners are weird. Thank goodness.

I'm now tragically no longer officially "on" the La Jolla Women's Cross Country team, although they'll have to find something more drastic than me graduating from high school to actually rid themselves of me. I still intend to attend running camp for pretty much the rest of my life, and I'll visit whenever I'm back in town. I'm no longer running cross country in college, due to the overwhelming intensity of it as well as my feeling that, since I in large part sacrificed theater for the sake of cross country in high school, now is the time to even things out. But, as I said, at heart I will always and forever be a cross country runner.

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