Excuse me if I say that I wasn't exactly optimistic about my race or the entire event itself. The only time I had run at Club Nationals was with my original club team back in 2007 when the race was in Ohio. Snow, mud and farmland. One of THE slowest 10K races I have ever run. And then there was the after party. The night culminated with a bouncer forcibly removing us from a Columbus strip joint. God only knows how the rental cars were returned. In summary, the rash on my arm cleared up with anti-fungal cream and I haven't been back to a strip joint since (no I didn't get a lap dance but hey, it was Columbus Ohio).
Fast forward to 2014. We put a rag tag team of seven runners together for the club nationals meet. After a ninety minute drive we arrived at the Lehigh University Paul Short course. Lehigh Valley was in fact a rather large valley with a track stadium and miles of fields. The race had already been touted as the largest club cross country nationals meet yet. Tents and runners crowded the course as I stepped onto the grass. To say the course was fast was an understatement. Even Keven Lee would approve of the landscaping.
Amazingly there were over six hundred runners on the line. Justin would later grumble that he was passed by heavy set runners breathing like three pack a day Joe. I can't quite say it was that bad for me but it certainly was no picnic. With marathon speed you can throw it down like you're in fourth gear but it doesn't mean you'll ever leave second. We had been training three months for a game of long distance chess and here we were in a giant cluster fuck of roshambo, go figure.
Our overall team finish wasn't half bad thanks to Nate and Geraint. Their sub thirty-two minute performances kept us from the basement in a field that saw one hundred and seventy-five runners under thirty-two minutes. On another optimistic note, we had a young college runner round out our top five. We all left talking of next year. Around the marathon, injuries and track races maybe we can remember to leave some time for good old cross country.
It's CROSS COUNTRY and ANYTHING goes BABY!
