Personal Narrative Analysis

At my high school there existed an elite group of athletes that was brave, foolish, and above all else a family. This is my distance running community. We suffered for four long years together, and made memories that forged us into a team. We were connected by not only the common struggle and love-hate relationship with our sport, but by a language that was used within our close-knit group, and shared common goals. I joined track when I was a freshman in high school, and spent my year learning to become a sprinter and long jumper. At the end of the season I had not really developed myself, and did not feel part of anything, mostly due to the fact that sprinters are jerks. My sophomore year, I joined cross country in the fall and later switched to distance in track. This is where I found my place. Within my cross country team, there exists a smaller, elite subgroup of runners that are either courageous or foolish enough to do both cross country and distance track. This is a hard concept to grasp for foreigners. In Wisconsin, belonging to both teams means that you suffer through the agony of Wisconsin weather in cross country and especially track. This takes a certain quality of character that many do not possess. I’ll be honest, track weather is the absolute worst. This is why the elite

Our community developed nicknames for warmups that did spread to the other grades in the running program, but they stayed within our smaller group for the most part, and will most likely die out and be replaced by another class. This is pretty much the same with other teams from other schools. We have warmups like Ruski’s, Facing Mecca, or toes that will not translate to other runners. For example, I went to a cross country summer camp and if I mentioned one of those exercises the runners from other high schools would be lost in the