2021-2022 Cambridge Road Literary Magazine

Drive

By Jack Nagtzaam The Uplift alarm goes off beside my bed. I roll over thinking today must be a school day. As I roll over, I see my cross-country uniform on my desk. It then dawns upon me what day today is. I proceed to make eggs with a banana for breakfast. Afterwards, I brush my teeth and prepare things for the race such as water and my shoes. My mom and I leave the house at 4:30 a.m.

Upon arriving at BI, my mom wishes me luck and I thank her as we go our separate ways for the day. As I walk over to the rest of my team, I notice the weather is chilly yet humid. I greet my close friends and, soon after we board the bus, we depart for the invitational. I notice myself nodding off as the bus falls silent and its movement rocks me to sleep.

Once we get there Aidan, one of my best friends, whom I convinced to join the team with me this year, nudges me, so I wake up.

The first thing I hear is coach Bob's voice telling the boys in the back of the bus to grab the gear for the team and for JV girls to get off the bus first, because they will be the first one’s racing. I grab my bag and follow my team off the bus to where we decide to set up our team’s canopy tent amongst other teams around us. I realize I have some time to kill, because I will be running in the very last race at the invitational which is at 12:00 a.m., and it is currently 7:30 a.m.

The BI Cross-Country Team lays its things down on the tarp under our team's canopy tent and heads over to the walk-through. I walk alongside Aidan and Calvin, some of my best mates on the cross-country team. We joke quite a bit as we examine the course, yet we have a suspicion that this race is going to be one hell of a hard run. There is close to no flat terrain with hills at every corner and section of the course including huge puddles on the trail. We are also surrounded by dense forest and open fields throughout the course. Finishing the walk through, we all sit in the shade to wait until the JV girls run by us so that we can cheer them on.

Halfway until my race starts Aidan and Calvin have just run theirs. They inform me that there is in fact a huge part of the course we did not walk through and that there is a hill on that part of the course that happened to be about 40 degrees in arc. I thank them for the heads-up because I know that if I did not find out about this until I ran that part of the course, I would likely be discouraged from performing at my best.

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