Cross Country Motivation

Motivation

In high school, that became the worst word ever during the summer. Cross country was hard already. Waking up at 5 o'clock, just to be at school at 5:30, just to sit and wait for our coach at 6, just to listen to a speech that lasted till 6:45, just to start the run at 7, to take an hour or more to finish the run, then to do core before we were released. Does that sound fun to you?

Well… I’m weird so yes this was fun for me. I love exercise. I love hanging out with my friends. I love being on a team and winning. You can’t tell me that winning isn’t a great feeling. We all love to win. So if you want to win, you got to put in the time to practice.

That was my only concern though. Time. Look at how much time was wasted! I could have been sleeping till 6 before I had to get to practice and actually practice. I love my team but all of us had lives. We were teenagers! If you didn’t know, summer is the time when you didn’t have to wake up early to go to school so you were allowed to stay up till 3 am having fun in your house on the phone, in front of a computer, or in front of the TV. I wanted that time as well. But get this, the only time that was possible was Saturday nights. Oh yeah, we had Saturday practice!

I know, I know, what does this have to do with motivation? My coach was all about cross country. He remembered the days when there were only 7 kids on the team and they were champions. They were dedicated. They were smart. They were hard workers. So since these kids could do this 2 decades ago, we should be able to do the same. “Back in the day, we had a kid on the team who had terrible asthma. He had to carry it around his neck during the race so that when it got too bad for him to handle, he’d slow down, take a hit, and get back into the race.” This was one of the coaches favorite stories to tell us when we were complaining at how tired we were. The next concern was he didn’t see a reason for why you missed practice. You woke up late, get a better alarm. You didn’t come to practice because you slept in, go to sleep earlier. You went on vacation, next time tell your parents to wait till there is a break from practices. You had a doctor's appointment, next time schedule it later. Now all of these mishaps happened frequently and they were never fun when you got put on the spot. The worst part about it was that if you missed practice, you’d get “motivation”. How did he know if we missed practice? He had an attendance sheet and took role everyday!

So towards the end of summer there would be a day of practice where we would go out for a small run to another school. We ran past other schools often so running to a school wasn’t a big deal for anyone. When we got to that school our coach would be waiting for us on the blacktop. He will have his clipboard in his hand and wait for everyone to gather around him so he could call out who has “motivation”. Granted there were times when he would let an excuse slide and not write you down for motivation. He also gave everyone 3 free passes (you could only miss 3 days without any valid excuse). So he would go down the list of names and find out who had “motivation”. Then he would group people who had the same number of times to do “motivation”.

Motivation for us meant, since you missed practice you have to make up practice with a series of workouts for each day that you missed so you can “catch-up” to everyone else who did attend practice. Motivation was a series of 3 different workouts. Each was timed by our coach. Once you finished all 3 workouts you made up one day of practice. Now when that day came the first time, I was oblivious to what was going on. I had no idea what “motivation” was. I knew I missed a few practices here and there but I’m sure I had good reasons. Unfortunately for me, my reasoning for a few of them wasn't good enough. I had 3 motivations to make up. 9 different workouts to complete. And no one in my group of 3 motivations. There was a group that only had 2 motivations to complete and a group that had 4, but I was the only one in 3. Once you finished your motivation set, the coach would come up to you and say, “I hope that you’re motivated to show up to practice everyday.”