Conference XC 2008

I have never experienced a race weekend as odd as this past one and that is saying something considering that my high school cross country team use to spray glitter on ourselves and rub our "fat" coach's head before we ran.

We arrived in Newberry, SC around 2:00 on Friday, the trip was rather uneventful besides driving thru rain. As we got nearer to the course the rain came down harder. The team slowly got out of the van and listened for it felt like hours to the race director describe the course on this map that looked nothing like where we were standing. "You will run the white arrow loop, then the B-green loop, the purple loop then back to the white. Girls don't pay attention to that, it is only the boys race." We jogged our way slowly to our box and began to run the course and the rain came down harder our shirts getting wetter and longer. Much to our chargin, the course was 45% concrete. The rain had washed away most of the markings so it became a find the arrow game. We somehow sucessfully navigated the course except we could not figure out where the end was, so another 45 mins later the course director had walked us thru it.

We got back to the hotel room and had 2 hours to shower and change for the conference banquet. We all actually were ready ahead of time (even the preppy Hardy boys) and we loaded the van drove to the banquet. As we drove to the banquet, the sky was an odd orange pink color, one that was very familar to me. I asked if a tornado had come thru and my coach responded with a yes. Trees and limbs were scattered across the road. We arrived at the church for the banquet and walked in to a completly dark building. The power had gone out and we ended up eating by candlelight. The food was buffet style but the servings were extremely small leaving many of us with empty stomachs. The food tasted off to me but I could not see what I was eating. Needless, to say I ended up throwing it up later that night.

Fast forward to the day of the race, the course and the markings had been destroyed so the boys race started late. The boys finished and told us that the course was completly trashed and not to step thru the puddles and that you needed spikes. We had decided to take the spikes out of our spikes to run with just the waffle, only to find out that in the wooded part we really needed the spikes for the muddy parts. We decided to stick with our idea. Our race began 15 mins late. I raced decently, only 6 places off of being all conference but the course was miserable the concrete was slick and the mud was deep. Needless to say we all ended up covered in mud and totally tired.

Cara