Running in dark
January 31, 2018 Uncategorized 0 comment tdesmarais18
There was a day when I realized that my friend needed a paper so he could get community service hours. At first I thought, “Wow this should be easy. All I have to do is run 3 miles. I run 6 in cross country practice.” I didn’t check the weather for that night. I also didn’t realize what I was getting myself into.
When I got home it was dark and cold. I knew I promised him I would run to his house so he could get the paper signed by his mom. When I walked outside to start my jog I was told not to go on I felt rain touch my forehead. The rain wasn’t even a liqiud. It was soft and slushy like the slush you see when the snow starts to melt in the winter. After the first mile I regretting my decision. I looked at my phone to check how long I was running for. It said I was at the 8 minute mark. This made me mad because I know I can run a mile quicker than that. So I speed up my night jog. By the time I got to cross road in sabattus I felt like giving up and turning around. I knew I couldn’t. I wasn’t going to break this promise. I started calming down and running faster, but then I wasn’t paying attention and stepped in a puddle of water. I checked my phone and saw I had ran 1.5 miles. I then said, “oh no I’m only halfway there.” The run just felt horrible after that. I started to feel like the cars wouldn’t see me in the dark even though I had my phone flashlight on. The rest of the run felt so long and the fog started to get thicker. I knew I needed to complete this mission. Eventually I got to his house and handed him the paper. He offered me a ride home, but I said no out of some weird instinct. Then I started to run again. When I ran the next mile I realized I was doing the run all over again, but backwards. I don’t know why I ran a total of 6 miles in the dark, fog, and rain, but in the end it was probably worth the adventure.
I feel like the reason I did it is because of a time someone helped me. They didn’t do it on purpose or meant to really make me feel the way I did. Sometimes the people who can help you the most are the ones you act like you dislike. No one likes being beaten in any competition, but when you’re beaten by someone who has more problem running than you do, that’s the moment you work harder to be better than them. This is when you can’t accept truth so you change the truth. Over time I eventually became a faster runner than my cross country rival. I was seen as one of the most determined runners on the team. They made me a better runner just by being my rival, but then one race I did something very dangerous. It was a road race combining both male and female runners. The team saved up money to run a race named applefest. When running I stayed with Mr. Anderson, James and Hunter. We ran the first mile and then the cold got to my lungs. My asthma kicked in and it got worse by the minute. I had to start walking eventually, trying to wait out the problem. Then I heard a familiar voice. “Hey! what are you doing?” I knew it was my rival. She was runner slower than she normally runs. So I knew that I couldn’t let her beat me so I started to run. Her leg was acting up like it normally does during races. I had my asthma slowing me down and she had her knee issue. Because we were rivals we couldn’t let the other win. So we were running at the same speed for 1.5 miles. In the end of the race I beat her by 3 seconds. There’s races where I beat her times and races where she beat mine. In the end having a rival just improves how you do things. When I didn’t have a goal to beat I could never run faster than 29 minutes. While I ran applefest in 22 minutes and 19 seconds.
Friends and rivals can help each other more than they realize they can. If it’s a friend pushing themselves to deliver a paper to a friend or a runner trying to support their pride in a race it can sometimes be tracked down to a friend or a rival.
Photo on Foter.com
