When I moved to Pennsylvania my sophomore year, I did cross country more as a way to meet people. Something must have happened from the biking that summer because I came out pretty strong that year. I can honestly say the most important day ever in my running career (even to this day) was when my coach pulled me aside at the beginning of the season and told me that I’d be starting varsity for the cross country team. I still remember the goosebumps I got from the pride of hearing that. Any runner will tell you that 90% of what you do on the course is mental. To have that kind of confidence puts you at a whole new level. I ran with a new frame of mind. I counted in the teams scoring, and a team was depending on me. I was also considered one of the 7 best runners on a 25 member team. I started consistently hitting 3.1 mile times under 18 minutes.
That year I did indoor track and outdoor track again, now finding my way as a miler, and occasionally a half miler.
My junior year for cross country was a big year. I was now one of the top 2 – 3 runners on the team, scoring every race, and getting my time down to 16:44 for the 3.1 mile.
Yet again I did the indoor and outdoor track, but this time, I was getting good at the mile. I don’t think I had a race all year where I didn’t run under 5:00 for the mile. My best time was 4:43.8, which I remember clearly as my biggest on-team rival ran a 4:43.7 in the same race. We got 2nd and 3rd place in that race, which was our local championship.
My senior year, I was elected captain of the cross country team. An honor I still hold dear – it’s a position elected by the entire team except the freshman. Having the votes of your peers is a great thing. But just as the promotion to varsity my sophomore year gave me the mental edge, the promotion of captain my senior year gave me the mental pressure that I had too many expectations. The majority of my times were in the high 18:00’s for that season and I didn’t care any more. I was sick of it. I began to despise running. It was all I had done in the past 4 years, season after season since Lisa Karchnak asked me to do track in 8th grade.
Then I made one if my hardest decisions. I told my coach I was going to do swimming rather than indoor track. He wasn't very happy with the decision. My high school had not lost a outdoor track championship in 5 years, and now one of his top distance runners was going to take a season off to swim. He tried to persuade me to stay on by telling me that I’d most likely be voted captain of winter track and spring track if I stayed. He also told me that chances are that I would not be voted captain of outdoor track if I disappeared from the scene for a season. I didn’t care; the thought of running was making me sick. Especially indoor track, its one of the most miserable sports. You do it to stay in shape for spring track, but that’s about the only reason, there's nothing fun about it. I think the reason it was so hard for me to make that decision was because of the respect I had for my high school coach, Coach Gallagher. To this day, no one else has tought me more about what it takes to be a sucessful runner, and how to think like a champion. Those are lessons you never forget, and help you in all areas of life.
In the end, I chose to do swimming, which was awesome. It also sort of came naturally to me, growing up in Hawaii spending my childhood at the beach in the water had a lot to do with that. I lucked out in joining a team that had a new coach that year. She was real tough, and the coach before her was someone who was very relaxed. This was an edge I had. No one on the team was accustomed to working hard, where as I was used to a rigorous training schedule with a tough coach, and thrived on it, especially since it wasn’t running.
To the credit of the new coach, she whipped a lot of us in to shape, and put together a strong team from a bunch of kids who were used to treating practice as a joke. At the end of the season, I had found a team that I really liked, made a lot of new friends, went 59 seconds for the 100m, and best of all, was psyched up to run again.
As predicted, I lost the vote for captain, but it was ok. I had my mental edge. I ended up concentrating on the half mile and quarter mile, as I had lost a bit of my distance base. I went 53.3 for the quarter and 1:56 for the half mile. Qualifying time for states for the half was 1:58. All I had to do was run a 1:58 in the suburban championships, then I go to districts where I need to run the 1:56, then I go to states. It should have been no problem. But I ended up running a 2:02 at the suburban championships because my girlfriend felt she needed to tell me that she cheated on me with one of my good friends 15 minutes before the race. Like I said, running is 90% mental.