• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

Kelly Grimes   Kelly Grimes is a third-year physiological sciences student. Grimes is from San Diego and is a potential scorer on the 2000 women’s cross-country team.  

Monday, Sept. 4

A knock at the door awakens me, and as Eric shouts out his wake-up call, I groggily roll out of bed. It is 6:30 a.m., and I still don’t think I’m used to the early morning.

The men’s and women’s cross country teams have traveled here to the Ponderosa Lodge in Mammoth for two weeks of intense, high altitude training. This camp is a very important part of our season, a time for pushing our bodies, focusing on training, and coming together as a team.

We gather in the common room of the lodge for a team meeting before the morning workout. Our coaches, Eric Peterson and Helen Lehman-Winters, review our race at Fullerton, our first of the season. They are very proud of our performance. We won the race as a team, and everyone had a positive experience. I am really excited!

I feel like I ran one of the best races of my life, and yet I still feel as though there is much to improve on.

The mood of the meeting is optimistic and everyone is ready to get to work.

We drive down to the creek for a morning run of 30 minutes. Though the sun is shining brightly, the air is crisp and chilly, so we are anxious to get started. The run is downhill at first, so I am feeling good. However, we are at 8000 feet elevation, so everyone is struggling with the breathing.

One of the keys to our success as a team will be our ability to minimize the separation between our first and fifth runner in a race. Great teams often run in packs, a tactic that in races not only makes it easier to stay on pace, but also serves to intimidate the competition. Therefore, we put a lot of focus on working together in practice.

The veterans of the team, captain Tina Bowen, Katie Nuanes and Elaine Canchola, are really vocal in making sure we don’t fall back in workouts.

The last half of this particular run is all uphill, and whenever I start to lose ground, the girls run right next to me, encouraging me and forcing me to keep up. The support among our team is amazing as each girl does her part to motivate and inspire her teammates.

With the morning workout over, we have the rest of the morning free to do what we please. Since most of my teammates are shop-a-holics, many decide to go to the outlet stores in town. We also use this time to prepare dinner.

At the start of camp, Eric and Helen divide us into groups and we are each responsible for two dinners.

The groups are coed and chosen randomly so we get a chance to interact closely with teammates we may not know as well. We get a certain amount of money and each group goes to the store together to buy the food. Our group is making barbecued chicken tonight. Yum!

As the afternoon workout approaches, the girls return from the outlets, arms full of bags, exclaiming about the amazing sales. We all pile into the vans again and head out to run. This time we are divided into groups. The middle distance runners go down to the track to run repeat 150s. The rest of us go to Shady Rest for a 40-minute run. Our coaches instruct us to run the first half comfortably and the last half steady. Helen runs with us, which is very helpful because she gives us pointers about our form and also shouts encouragement.

Our team does an excellent job of executing the workout because we are able to run controlled and comfortably for the first part, and we pick it up while still maintaining our pack during the second part of the run.

The focus we maintain during the workout is a good sign because each workout brings us closer to our team goal of qualifying for the NCAA Championships in November.

After running is over for the day, we head back to the lodge and do sit-ups and push-ups as a group. The dinner crew prepares the food and we all eat together and play cards and watch movies. It is really nice to have this time together before school starts to become comfortable with each other and form strong relationships with our teammates. We are looking forward to a successful and fun season!