Personal Narrative-The Day Before The Race At Tustin High School

“Alright, you guys have run the course before. You 've all trained hard throughout the whole month for this. For many of you, this will be your last race this season, so make it count!” Coach Guzmán announced during a whole team huddle behind the Sports Pavilion and next to the track at Tustin High School. This was the day before the race, the Empire League Finals, which determines which schools will move on to the CIF Southern Section Preliminaries, the Cross Country equivalent of the quarterfinals in other sports. Today’s practice was two grass loops, going around the baseball fields from the Concessions building to the bleachers and back to the Concessions for more or to stop. Compared to the runs we have done out in the community, grass loops are the easiest our practice will get.

Today is the race, but we still have our classes, as this is on a Wednesday, and to be precise, October 28th, 2015. We’re departing at 12:30 p.m. during fifth period, but we leave our class earlier at 12:15, only five minutes after class begins, to head to the locker room, change, and buy lunch. It is fifth period now, and fellow classmates and teammates Sebastian, Jonathan and I are anxiously waiting for the five minutes to pass. We are in room 421, Mr. Rice’s, sitting in the back corner table next to the door, where Sebastian and I are

The race that I am running in is the Boy’s Frosh-Soph at 3:30, which means we are warming up now. Following a much longer than usual warm up run around the park, although I was comfortable with it, our group sat in a circle and went through our stretches. A few senior runners came into the circle for speeches, including an attempt at a motivational speech, and a campaign “vote for me” speech for Homecoming Queen. As soon as we finished our stretches, we walked over to the starting line, where we did additional stretches such as high-knees, butt kicks, and strides. Completing the additional stretches, we were ready to