“And 30 minutes later, an hour later, it happened to me in basically the exact same spot.”

One of the – probably the best runner, he’s running at Division One in college on our team. He was in first place and he collapsed right across the finish line and then he got up and he kept running and then he collapsed again, and they had to take him to the hospital and it was super scary and I told my friend, I said to him, “That would be terrible. I can’t imagine if that happened to me!” And 30 minutes later, an hour later, it happened to me at basically the exact same spot. And I wasn’t able to like move my arms the way I wanted them to. When I was trying to drink water, I like poured it over my head. I threw up, it was one of the – it was the scariest experience ever of my life. And I thought for sure I was never doing cross-country again. A year later, I found myself back in cross-country. I hated it for the first little bit, didn’t want to do it. I don’t even know why I ended up doing it. I just feel like I needed to stay athletic, and volleyball just can’t do it.  Hand eye coordination sucks! Wanted something that I can kinda push myself mentally, and I don’t think I could do that with volleyball. So I decided to do cross-country one more year. Midway through the season, I started realizing I was feeling so much stronger. I wasn’t getting good times, like I haven’t gotten really a single good time this year, but I’ve been feeling so much better. I’ve been sprinting the end. I haven’t been feeling like I’m going to pass out, I’m going to die, I’m going to throw up. And that was a great feeling because that made me never wanna do it again, and so halfway through the season things started to change and I told myself, “You know what? Maybe high school cross-country is in the cards for you.” And so I think I’m going to do high school cross country, and I’m actually pretty excited for it. Tomorrow is my last middle school cross-country practice ever. And I actually think that might make me cry. Holy crap, middle school went by so fast.