You wake up suddenly when the alarm clock sounds at 5:00A.M. You’re exhausted and still tired from the party on Friday. You go downstairs only eating a minimum breakfast so you don’t get a stomach cramp during the race. You hop into the large white car, and you’re rushed over to the middle school. You see all of the cross-country members boarding the bus for the long trip. On the bus you stare out of the window in a daze, but you don’t fall asleep. You stay on the bus for what seems like forever without food. Suddenly you start seeing lots of parked cars on the sides of the road.

Then the bus pulls in and unloads the team. A few kids haul the cooler that has the snacks and drinks for after the race. Every one settles in as we set up then camp, and walk the course once. Then we just lounge around or go buy a shirt. Then the best girls on the team have to go stretch and do a short warm up run to get ready for the race. After they’re finished they start to put there spikes in and take jackets off. Then coach hands out the numbers that you pin to your jersey. There’re a few minutes for them to take a sip of water or to listen to their race song until its time to go to the starting line. The coach gathers all of them, and they jog up to the starting line. Once they march up to the starting line that’s a sign for the varsity boys to begin their stretching and warming up. As we’re stretching, the girls varsity runs by so we take a moment to cheer them on. I was lucky enough to qualify for the boys varsity. So every one stretches, runs, and does agilities. We have a sip or two of water before we’re off to the starting line. Once we get there coach makes us do starts which are very quick sprints but a short distance.

We do them twice, then he has a quick couple of words to say, then we all put our hands in and shout out DUNLAP! And we all jog back to the starting line in the tiny boxes that everyone is crammed into. As we’re all talking everyone is interrupted by the announcer. He tells everyone that’s not running to get out of the box, and then he tells a brief description of how they’ll begin the race. So all the racers stop talking and listen. Then suddenly completely everything goes dead quite as I stare in front of me. A whistle blows, and everyone is in ready position. Everyone is in complete silence including the people who cheer and watch. The long pause seems so long. Then the gun shot booms. Everyone launches out at full speed from their boxes. Pushing and shoving aggressively. Everyone is cheering and screaming as we’re sprinting.