I have two weeks left before I hear a gun shot...hopefully. If not, something went terribly wrong.

The summer leading into senior year my friends and I woke up early and met at our high school and worked out for a while before going out onto the track to run. We were slow at first, but we got stronger as the months went on, and by the end of it we were challenging ourselves to do crazy feats of strength, such as running backwards for a mile, doing lunges for a quarter mile, jump roping the 3/4 of a mile perimeter of the school, etc. We were having a fun time watching ourselves howl in pain from sore muscles and busted ego's.

A little before August my best friend Ajay told us that he was going out for the cross country team that year while we were walking back to where we parked amidst frowns of confusion and pity; none of us had ever attempted to run more than two miles before, even after our summer of crazy challenges. Now, I make decisions on a whim, especially some of my biggest, and in that moment I told Ajay that I'd try it out with him. Who knew what to expect?

The day came for our first practice. We couldn't get our schedules just right so instead of meeting on Monday we showed up on a Wednesday ready to run. Not only were we going to run two miles, but our assignment was to run four miles to a local community center and back. I remember looking at Ajay and the surprised look on his face. It took him a few seconds to notice me on the other side of the circle we were in, but as soon as he did, I mouthed some nastiness for having me run something crazy like four miles.

So, we ran, and we ran, and we ran. Ajay and I started strong; I mean, we had been running the entire summer. Ajay shot forward with one of the better runners on the team and I didn't see him again until the turnaround point, which I had yet to reach. I set a strong pace at the start and couldn't keep it, falling way back to where the rest of the guys were. I had fun the rest of the run complaining about how long we had been running. Honestly, coach expects us to run this much?

And it's at this point that I realize how much I miss cross country and the team that we had back then. I started a new blog. I messaged them and hope they're all cool with it because there's so much material to write about, pretty much all of it hilarious.

In two weeks I have the Hot Chocolate 5K. It brought me way back to the old school days of XC especially because I'm in the unique spot of being exactly where I was when I ended it in high school, time wise (my best recorded time was 20:12). I actually have a chance to break my 5K record,and I'm on pace to do it, it's unbelievable. I'm getting more excited for this race each day after I run. It's going to be really fun.