Yesterday, my friend Hannah and I decided that we were going to be first to finish the mile run in PE for the girls. That was 4 1/2 laps around the track.
She told me before we started,” Kelly, I’ll be happy if you finish first, because it’ll be like me finishing first. And You’ll be happy if I finish first because… well, yeah that won’t be the same.”
I started laughing because SHE thought she was faster than ME. Actually, that’s pretty much the truth, but it’s not really fair since she’s over a foot taller than me. All the girls were lined up (me and hannah ran up to be in front), and we were off. Hannah and I, unlike most girls, were going to run the entire mile. No stopping. So on the first lap we THOUGHT that we were pacing ourselves. By the time we finished the first lap, we were on the opposite side of the track of the other girls. We were going faster than planned. Then my old best friend, Rachel, came and joined us! All the guys who were keeping times of their partners were cheering for us.
By the time we were a half way through our second lap, we noticed how we felt like we were about to throw up (PE right after lunch, yeah, not the brightest of the school’s ideas).
“We’re not gonna stop for anything!” we kept saying.
By this time, we were already lapping people. Aalthough, we had slowed down.
“WHOOOOO! KEEP GOING!” our partners cheered.
We were moaning about how sick we felt. How we were gonna throw up. Actually, I never once got a cramp through-out this, and neither did my running partners. The only things that hurt were our throats and our stomachs. At this time I would like to mention, Hannah tried to stop at the 1 1/2 lap, then she got back behind Rachel, so I was in the lead.
We kept up the pace, convincing ourselves that this was the worst of it and that we would stop feeling the pain in a little bit. I glanced at the timer as we ran by in the middle of the third lap, it read 3:25. I thought that we could do it in 6 minutes.
Rachel and I were getting more and more tired. Half- way through our fourth lap, Hannah suddenly started sprinting. We had no idea where she got the energy to do this. We heard boys screaming, “Get your time, get your time!!” as we jogged by, and I picked up the pace a little bit, Rachel right behind me. With a 1/5 of a lap left, I started sprinting.
“TIME!”
“7:11, but add 10 seconds, I started the timer late.”
Rachel finished 1 second within my time. I clutched my chest as I stopped running. The taste of blood in my throat, my lung full of fluid. If I breathed in too much it pained me. Yet, through the pain, somehow I felt good, I felt like running the mile again, only this time beating Hannah and getting 1st!
“Good job, what was your time?” my partner, Matt, asked.
He couldn’t believe it when I told him my time was 7:21.
“WHAT!? Thats messed up, you had to have been going faster than that! I mean you guys were haulin’, I mean, ya’ll were haulin!” Matt told the 3 of us afterwards. Boy, I felt good, 2nd place, and I wanted to do it again! But there was no way we could’ve kept going. Rachel wound up with a cough ( I did later on too), all three of us had throats that hurt, and ears that hurt as well. I have an ear ache right now, and my throat was bleeding too.
I feel very accomplished right now, and next time, we’re gonna go for breaking the school record! (6:43)
That’s a good description that brings back memories of how I felt when I ran track in high school, especially how it feels to be just completely winded in your lungs and throat. But then a little later you feel really great and are ready to do it again.
It doesn’t sound like you’re that far off of the record, especially if you had kept a more even pace. Running for that long is hard no matter what though.
It’s amazing how far we can push ourselves when we put our mind to it. You might notice if you do this more often that at a certain point when you feel like you can’t go anymore you start to get this tingle in your head and a burst of energy. I love when that happens.
That’s pretty awesome, Kelly. You are a real competitor! I’m sorry you had problems with your throat, though. Do you think you might like to be a regular jogger?
Kelly, did you really have blood in your throat? How does blood taste? Why is Rachael “your old best friend” is she still your friend but just not your “best”? I used to jog two miles every morning but I never timed myself. Your story was exciting, I got nervous reading it. G.