The Woodberry Harrier 2016: Volume 4

Taking off the Braces

I’ve never been a fan of race day. Not that it makes me sick or anything, I’d just rather be out on a trail. Yet, I will say there is a special quality to these days: they make you battle. You’re racing others, but you’re really fighting yourself. The latter is more important to me though, especially this year. I can’t help thinking of Saint Anthony who put himself into to solitude for forty years to battle his internal demons. In some ways, a cross country race feels the same. As you ascend a mental mountain for nearly twenty minutes, there is no balm for the pain, no external force to carry you.  And by the end, the answers are not always what you want. Sometimes you find out that you are weaker than you thought, that you are not as noble as you hoped. You find out that you just couldn’t do it, and you find yourself in the muck of wishing you didn’t have to know this. A race is like acid striping away the thick varnish on your self-image. But it is only when this happens that you can become a true runner, only when the ego has been cast aside and hope of personal glory is shadowed by failure. 

The race at Albemarle was a special one for me. I ran my first good race there last year:  the first time I ran a fast first mile, the first time I beat the guy I had been chasing in practice, the day when all the Hale pep talks seemed to come true.  A year and four sprained ankles later, I was coming off of two sloppy races and was still 1:30 off my PR, so I wanted to prove that I hadn’t, in the words of Kurt Cobain, "faded away."  I needed to know that this senior season wasn't simply my undoing. 

 So it was a relief, when Mr. Hale came over as I was tightening my nylon ankle braces and said “You

can lose those things.” Finally, the big man was letting me fly free today.

After the gun a few minutes later, I was off.  I spent the first half-mile thinking I was going to blow an ankle on the downhill. But soon I decided that was no way to race, and so I turned off that thought and picked up the pace from then on.   And as I approached the finish line in the distance, I was surprised to see 19:00 flashing.  I knew then that I was going to have the best race of my season so far. Nowhere near last year, but it was big improvement over the week before. 

I’ve finally gotten used to my ankles. They hurt every morning as I jump out of the top bunk. Every long run ends in some throbbing.  I know they’ll be sore for the rest of the season, but it’s just a little pain. It’ll pass, and something worthwhile will remain. My meager performance in that race was the glimmer of hope I had been waiting for. A reminder that my struggles had not been in vain after all, that my season wasn’t going to be a sad story because now I had hope.

Regardless of all that, when I look back at cross country in twenty years. I won’t think of my time at the Albemarle Invitational or even at the State Meet, but I’ll remember the kind of hope that comes from fighting.  And I will reminisce about days like last Monday, when a bus filled with good friends flew up the Locust Dale hill where the tall oaks gave way to a giant blue opening in the sky. The spirt in the sky, someone called it. I’ll about the view off Moormont with my breath still broken. I’ll think of long runs with teammates.  I’ll think of the sap falling. I’ve started to wonder if some higher power guided me to this endeavor to show me these beautiful moments in just the right light.

In this light, my frustrations seem almost funny. I realize that each day of this cross country season is

about holding on to the yarns of fate the gods so artfully wove to bring us all together here in this time of our lives.  And I must dare to live that fate every remaining day of the season, in the ugly moments as well as the beautiful ones, because they are all so pure and undiluted, all tied to something so much better than all of us and all our PRs put together. 

Ryan Kacur '17


Ryan wasn't the only one who had a good day running in the rain at Albemarle.  The boys were a muddy mess by the end of the day, but we left there with some very impressive PRs and, more to Ryan's point, some fresh hope and pride at the end of the day.  Here are the results:

Albemarle Invitational
Panorama Farms, VA
8 Oct, 2016
12th out of 31 teams 1-5   spread: 1:11 1-7 spread: 2:34
Varsity Race	Time	Place out of 242
Carrington	17:06	33rd	a 23-sec lifetime PR
Rich	17:16	40th	an 18-sec lifetime PR
Singleton	18:02	94th	a 31 sec lifetime PR
Tydings	18:03	96th	a 4 sec lifetime PR
Lindner	18:18	118th	a 26-sec season PR
Watt	18:22	126th
Sompayrac	19:40	196th	a 28-sec lifetime PR
Kacur	20:00	211th	a 33-sec season PR
JV Race		Place out of 255
Wall	19:37	55th	a 48-sec season PR
McKay	19:30	59th	a 1:51 season PR
Dearborn	19:50	82nd	a 24-sec season PR
Jacobs	DNR
Clark	DNR
Duke	DNR
Ross	DNR
Richard	DNR

The weekend following that, we trained and rested, and this past weekend we hosted Fork Union here for our annual dual on the new course we designed.  It was a damp and chilly afternoon, but we had some nice performances.   Here are those results:

Woodberry-Fork Union Dual Meet
Woodberry Forest, VA
24 Oct, 2016
1st out of 2 teams 1-5   spread: 0:54 1-7 spread: 2:36
Varsity Race	Time	Place out of 21
Carrington	17:13	2nd
Rich	17:18	3rd
Tydings	18:08	5th
Jacobs	18:11	6th	a 20-sec lifetime PR
Clark	18:14	7th	a 12-sec season PR
Singleton	18:29	8th
Lindner	18:45	10th
Sompayrac	19:30	13th	a 10-sec lifetime PR
Duke	19:53	15th	an 11-sec season PR
Dearborn	19:56	16th
Kacur	20:11	17th
Wall	20:28	19th
McKay	21:36	20th
Watt	DNR
Ross	DNR
Richard	DNR

P.S.  Many thanks to Jennifer Wall and Amanda Dearborn for sharing photos which were much better than the ones I took.  And Many thanks for your patience.  This edition got snagged on numerous technical difficulties and delayed by the recently extra-frantic Woodberry schedule.