The Wooodberry Harrier 2016: Volume 1

Ready Runners

nowhere anywhere

but where it is

--Wendell Berry (The Book of Camp Branch)

The course we raced Saturday at Loriellla Park in Fredericksburg is a study in variation.  It loops around well-groomed fields, follows a stretch of pavement, and winds through rocky, rooty trails. There’s a long hill with a downhill in the middle, wide-open flats, several tight curves, a start like a badly wrinkled rug, and a 200-meter uphill finish with a turn in the middle.  Runners bunch and spread and bunch again and roll ankles and stumble and get annoyed and back off.  It’s a thinking runner’s course, a course for the ready runner, a death trap for those who race on auto-pilot.  It’s the physical manifestation of a sport which dares you to rely on your tidy little plan, a course which makes excuses handy.  Unpredictable courses make quitting easy, but confronting the temptation to quit is why we are out there in the first place.

The problem with unpredictability is that it is, well, exactly that. In other words, the admonition to expect the unexpected doesn’t help, doesn’t even make sense.   If you walk around cross country meets, you hear a lot of similarly catchy advice like Plan the race and race the plan, which is helpful only in a race on a track in perfect conditions against very predictable opponents.  We pondered this defining quality of the sport at camp, and out of those conversations came a shared resolve to embrace it and let it make us better—to work at becoming ready runners.

This isn’t about planning.  It’s about cultivating a courageous presence—the wide-awake, right here, right now, Bring it on! kind.  I love Annie Dillard’s line What you are doing right now is what you are doing with your life.  What you’re doing on this stretch of the course--this start, this hill, this straightaway, this finish--is what you’re doing with your race--and with your season and, yes, with your life today.  This is more than mere focus or alertness, though that’s where it starts.  Dillard calls is an "energetic readiness."

It’s the stubborn commitment to grapple with whatever nasty challenge the race (or the workout or the season itself) throws up—not just the exciting ones but also (especially) the little irritating and embarrassing ones.  It’s one thing to summon what it takes to sprint the last fifty yards in front of the crowd, but it takes something much stronger to hold a tough pace when you’re all alone in the woods in Mile 2.  It’s pretty easy to keep working hard and taking risks when you're improving and winning, but it takes real courage to push even harder through the times when doubt is waxing and inspiration is waning.

It’s the courage to grab the controls again--and again and again--when fear or pain or panic or frustration hijack your mind.  It’s the grateful, eager remembering in the heat of battles both large and small that this challenge—yes, this one--may well be the challenge you most need, that in every challenge you face a part of yourself that needs standing down.  As John Kabat-Zinn reminds us, wherever you go, there you are.   No path to courage is anywhere but where it is.  If a dime-sized heel blister can wreck your focus, then a dime-sized heel blister is the very thing you need to learn to handle, and now is the time to handle it.   And anyway, it’s the challenge you’ve got, the eye of the needle you’ve got to get your tail through as soon as you can if you don’t want to quit. So lower your head and go, and when you get stuck, back up and start again--and again and again.  Brene Brown calls this kind of courage wholeheartedness, and it’s the stuff of the ready runner.  And this is the theme we have chosen for our season.

We had the best pre-season camp anyone can remember over in Vesuvius.  We ran on some beautiful trails and roads, we prepared a few fine feasts, and we spent long stretches undistracted time away from technology and the world at large talking about what matters..  

Last Tuesday we traveled to Panorama Farms in Earlysville to compete in the Ragged Mountain Cup, the annual 4x2 mile relay that brings together all of the schools in Central Virginia. Usually this race occurs as we travel back from preseason camp, but this year, since school is starting a week earlier, the boys had an extra week of training to prepare. The extra training paid off as the Harriers had their best showing in ever at the Cup. The relay team of James Carrington, Clay Tydings, Parker Watt, and Parker Jacobs placed 2nd overall behind a very good Western Albemarle squad. Woodberry also placed 5 runners in the top 25: James, Clay, Parker Watt, William Rich, and Henry Clark (in his first cross country race).

Ragged Mountain Cup (2-mile relay)
Panorama Farms Earlysville, VA
30 August, 20016
2nd out of 22 teams 1-5   spread: 30 sec. 1-7 spread: 46 sec.
Runner	Time	Place out of 176
Carrington	10:50	5th	40   sec. improvement; Top-5 honors.
Watt	11:01	8th	Top-10 honors
Clark	11:18	19th	Top 20 Honors
Tydings	11:20	21st (T)	52 sec. improvement; Top 25 honors
Rich	11:20	21st (T)	54 sec. improvement; Top 25 honors
Lindner	11:36	26th
Jacobs	11:36	30th (T)	7 sec. improvement
Richard	12:13	66th
Singleton	12:19	74th
Dearborn	12:39	89th
Sompayrac	12:52	98th
Wall	13:05	112th (T)
Open Race		out of 295    runners
Duke	12:23	3rd
McKay	12:37	7th
Kacur	DNR
Ross	DNR

And early Saturday morning, we piled into mini-buses to take the trip over to Fredericksburg for the Chancellor Invitational. This would be the team’s first opportunity to race 5k this season and see how they stacked up against some of the better public schools. This turned out to be a fantastic season opener day placing 3^rd overall in the A Race. (Last year we placed 7^th.)  James Carrington earned a medal for his Top 15 finish and Parker Watt just missed a medal by one place. In the B Race, the Harriers finished 9^th overall and were led in gutsy fashion by 4^thformer Henry Singleton in his first cross country 5k.

Chancellor Invitational
Fredericksburg, VA
3 Sept, 2016
3nd out of 19 teams 1-5   spread: 1:04 1-7 spread: 1:34
A Race	Time	Place out of 138
Carrington	17:30	10th	1 sec. improvement; Top-10 honors.
Watt	17:49	16th
Rich	17:58	21st	38 sec. course PR
Tydings	18:07	26th	46 sec. course PR
Jacobs	18:34	45th	57 sec. course PR
Lindner	18:45	49th	????
Clark	19:05	59th	1st XC race ever!
B Race	12:13	Place out if 155
Singleton	19:19	17th
Richard	19:44	34th
Sompayrac	20:08	54th
Dearborn	20:14	59th
Wall	20:15	61st
McKay	21:26	107th
Kacur	DNR
Duke	DNR
Ross	DNR