MileSplit XC Journals 2011
Meet Grace Tinkey, Foot Locker finalist from First Presbyterian GA. Grace will be sending in a journal several times over the course of the 2011 season to update you on her running and the life of an elite HS runner. Enjoy!
Hey Everyone!
Summer is over and we are already into race mode for cross country already! Wow, time sure does fly by. Our FPD xc team recently ran in the Berry Clara Bowl Invitational a few weeks ago, and had a blast being able to run against so many schools. We drove up the night before as a team, and got to jog the course and take a bunch of crazy photos along the way! That night we went to Bella Roma, the local Italian pizzeria/pasta , and had a great time hanging out together. In 2 weeks we are headed up on a road trip to Cary, N.C for the Great American Race, which is an awesome course if you haven’t run it before.
After Berry we ran the Labor Day Road Race, which was fun because we normally don’t do road races during cross country season, but what was so cool about it was that the awards were Bonzai and Lucky Bamboo Trees. It was funny because attached to them were all the instructions on how to care for your tree and how to properly trim them, etc.. cause normally when you come to a race, you don’t expect tp get a tree for a award. But they are neat.
One of the best parts of cross country is being able to go out and train with your teammates and work hard but also having a good time. We have about 16 girls on our team this year, many who this is there first year of xc, so its been awesome seeing them all improve and get excited by their hard work.
So far, we’ve been off to a great start this year as a team. We went to the Lighthouse Family Retreat in Seaside to hang out with kids and their families who were dealing with cancer, while also getting to spend some time on the beach. Our girls team also got to go to Callaway Gardens to take a break from our regular training trails to a change to running at callaway. We got to do a ropes course and conquer our fear of heights on the climbing wall in the woods, going on our biking adventures, and seeing a circus of acrobats which was really cool.
One of the funniest things that I got to do this summer was with a group of training partners in Blairsville, Ga. We are all from different schools, but over the past year have had a lot of fun training together even when sometimes the workouts got tough, and being able to encourage each other not only in running, but in life, school, etc.. We got to experience ice baths for the first time in the mountain creeks, which were freezing, but we had a lot of fun memories from trying to make the time go by faster while in the water.
We ran a bunch, got to go on some hikes near the Appalachian Trail, and going to Helen . In Helen it was really funny because there was a frozen yogurt place . And you have to weigh in your yogurt in order to determine the price, and we all probably ate like 2 pounds of it each, haha but it was really good.
One morning we ran up to the top of one of the hills there, called Runaway Drive and got to see the sunrise over the mountains, which was really cool, because in the cities you never get to experience the beauty of God’s creation as much as when you don’t have to see all the buildings and cars around. After one of the runs when we ran up to Vogal State Park,we were all really tired and just fell on the grass, and our coach joked to our parents by sending them a picture of all of us just laying on the ground.
Jimmy Meserle, Tommy Fizgerald, and Anna Leigh Nix are all some of the best training partners any one could ask for, because we are all crazy about running and completely understand each other. That’s why our coach named our group Team POD (pain of discipline). We all have a blast running and hanging out, but also push each other when its time too.
Well, that’s the summary of this summer.Hope everyone is having a great start of their xc season, and we will see everyone out there at the races!
Best of Luck,
Grace Tinkey
Quote of the Week: “What matters is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Inspirational Youtube Video: Ben Comen Story