A CCQ's Guide to Running

I’ve been running for about 7 years now, and to be honest, the first 6 weren’t as fun as I wanted them to be. Throughout high school I thought it wasn’t “cool” to run cross country or track. I hated waking up in the morning to run, hated waking up on Saturday mornings for meets, and hated being known as the “cross country runner” of my school. I thought about quitting, but my competitive nature dint let me stop. I told myself if I made it to state I would quit. Well I trained harder than ever to reach that goal. With help from my coach I made it to Round rock and placed a sorry 40th place. As I thought about my career, I decided to go for a better time, not for my love of the sport, for more medals, but for my selfish goal to beat myself. I came back next year and placed 24th and lost to people I have lost to my whole life. That’s when I decided to take my running career to the collegiate level. I wasn’t good enough to get a scholarship unless I went to a junior college, but I insis...

Victoria Phillipi is a great runner, with 16 marathons under her belt, you’d think that she has been a runner since she could walk. Well, that’s not quite the case for her. At age 16, Victoria wasn’t the runner she is today. Victoria was in an all-girls gym class and every day before they started whatever they were scheduled to do that day, they had to run an 800 around the track. No big deal right? Well Victoria, wasn’t much of a runner back then. She was always the last person to finish her 800 and was often ill physically for the rest of the day after. She was tired of being the last person on the track and decided to work on her running performance so that she could run like a "normal" person. It took a few years but she slowly progressed to longer and longer distances at comfortable paces, staying determined to do better and slowly starting to create an addiction to running. When she began her career in accounting, these constant attempts to better her health lead to m...

2 weeks and 4 finals away from finishing my freshman year. If I would have been told a year ago that I would be running in college and that I would meet some great people outside of my little hometown, I would probably not pay much attention. I learned really quickly that this is not what I thought it would be. So I thought about how nice it would be if I could have said: Dear High School Athlete, Senor year feels like its gong by quick huh? Times is flying by and you feel like all of the struggles being a senior are piling up. Graduation, prom, scholarships, applications to schools, how can you finish up all of this stuff, work, study, and run? Its ok you will do alright. Lucky for you, you have already signed with a college away from Mom and Dad. You might think that you have grown up already, but trust me you haven’t yet... You might think that it’s all flowers and butterflies once you get out of high school, but sorry to tell you, it 10 times worse outside of high school. The hom...

Since I’ve began college I have been very intrigued by TED Talks. I love these as motivational tools and good source of outside thinking and good information. I was watching a few videos when I came across one lady by the name of Elizabeth Gilbert. Elizabeth is an author known mostly for her book called EAT PRAY LOVE. She goes on to describe her situation when trying to get published. She spent 6 years as a young aspiring author trying to get published only to get denied over and over again. This constant feeling or rejection picked at the motivation and determination to work on her works. She had many thoughts of doubt about her writing career and even thought seriously about putting away the pen and concluding her attempts at getting published. Many Runners feel this same way. Runners that get stuck in a slump, or can’t seem to stay healthy often consider their running careers. Almost all runners have this fear of never getting to where they want to be, much like Elizabeth. She tells...

What is a CCQ? It's early August. I lace up my shoes for my first collegiate  practice, eat a granola bar and walk to the locker room where I meet all of my new teammates. Some of them friendly looking, almost all of them intimidating. It’s easy to see the guys that are returners, greeting each other and introducing themselves to the freshman, while the freshman (me included) shit their pants as they await the first dreaded practice. That’s when I heard it for the first time. "So how does it feel to be a collegiate  CCQ?” I followed up that question by asking what in the heck he was talking about. That’s when I finally understood what he was talking about. Now you know what a CCQ is, even if you don’t know it yet. Think back to high school. The scrawny kid that wasn’t tall enough for basketball, muscular enough to play football, coordinated enough to put a bat on a baseball, heck couldn’t even put a golf ball on the green. If that’s you get thrown on the cross countr...