Don’t Be Afraid to Lead

By Nancy Cardenas

It was the morning of the 3a/2a/1a High School girls Cross Country State Championships in Eugene Oregon. I was standing in a big field of grass, among 125 runners. The sky was foggy, it was raining, cold, and there was mud all over the course. As I prepared myself to get my head in a racing mentality, I stood on the long white line that stretched as far as 24 lanes for the runners. All I could hear were the teams doing there chants and cheers all together, the crowds of people standing around the start waiting for the race to begin. While I was waiting for the race to start I prepared myself by taking many deep breaths, in through the nose hold the breath, and release through the mouth. I did this for about a minute. Then I began to do some run outs to warm myself up a bit before the race. My stomach felt like it had hundreds of butterflies flying around. I was really nervous, but being nervous meant that I was ready to race.

Finally the official blew the whistle and everyone got in position to begin the race. We were all ordered in alphabet by the name of our town, but since I and my sister had been the only ones  who qualified from my small high school in  Umatilla in Eastern Oregon, I was with a small group of girls standing on the side who had only a few qualify from their high school. I checked that my bib number “107” was secure and took some more deep breaths, and remembered what my coach had told me right before the race he said, “Champ I believe that with your training and your capabilities that you can win this race you just have to go out, have a smart race, and don’t be afraid to lead.”

A lot had led up to this moment, I remember the first day of cross country my freshman year. I joined the team a little late because I didn’t have my paperwork filled out on time. My first day of practice the team had to go on a 45 minute run, I couldn’t even finish this run I thought I was going to do so bad at this sport. When I finished the run, the upper class girls helped me out because I could barely even stand up and they thought I was going to faint. My coach still had faith in me even though I didn’t do so well on this run. As the weeks went by I started to get the hang of running. I impressed my coach when I raced for the first time, and at practice it just got better and better. He always told me he had big plans for me, and when he told me this it really didn’t seem to mean a lot to me considering I was a freshman and didn’t know much about anything that had to do with cross. The season had been over, and we were at the district race. I was my team’s number one runner. Finally, the race began, and as soon as I realized it the race was over. I ended up placing 2nd in the district. I moved onto the state race and finished in 11th place, just one away from medaling my freshman year.

My sophomore year came and I was determined to run a little bit in the summer. It wasn’t a long time of training considering I began to run in the beginning of August, and cross country began around the middle of August. I actually joined the team on time this year, and trained with the team those couple weeks of summer time. I was already in better shape than I was the last year for cross. The week before school started our coach made us run a time trial. A time trial is a course measured out to make 3.1 miles. Our coach ran the guys and girls together, and once we started I was up there with most the guys.

Throughout most of the time trial I felt good, but the sun was so hot, it was very hard to breathe, and my mouth started to feel very dry. As I was running down the stretch to the finish I was pushing the pace as hard as I could, and I came in 6th overall the guys and girls. My coach said good job to everyone, and gave everyone a popsicle after the run. This is something that was really unique about my coach; he would bring us popsicles after a hard workout, and I just thought it was the coolest thing.

We returned to school from summer break, and our training had begun to get harder and more intense. We did the 45 minute run that I almost died on last year, and I succeeded during the run. I ran very well, and was running with a pack of guys. Our coach was really into running and knew how to treat his runners well, and to be injury free. The season was almost at its end, and this is when my coach began to talk about goals for everyone. He said to me, “I believe you can be district champion this year.” I wasn’t sure if he was serious, but when districts came along I was leading the race. I ended up leading the whole way, and became district champion in cross country for the first time. The feeling was so great; I’ve never felt so accomplished. I was only a sophomore so this made me excited, and it made me think about how my next two years were going to be. Winning the district meet meant I was going to state. My coach had been talking to me about a Nike sponsored race that the top 4 state finishers go to, and I thought it would be really cool to make it to that race. Before my race he told me I could make it there. I was a little nervous before my race, but I went out and raced tough. I finished 4th in the state, got a sweet medal, qualified for Nike Border clash, and got a school record with the time of 19:31. I ended up having a pretty good year.

My junior year wasn’t much different than my sophomore year; I started training around the same time that I trained last year. My coach always pushed my training tolerance harder than all the girls. He knew I was willing to go through lots of pain in order to be a good runner. By this time I had it set in my mind that I wanted to be a state champion. But that seemed almost impossible to me. It was a hard workout day during practice, and our coach told us we were going to be running timed miles on the track. For this workout we ran 3.1 miles all together, but we took a break in between each mile. The rest time was determined by how high everyone’s pulse rate was. During this workout I tried my best to stick with the guys, it’s the only way I could get a good workout, because my pace was too fast to run with the girls.

Once I finished the workout my coach totaled everyone’s times, and said I had made the number all time fastest time for the workout. I was very satisfied with the workout.  My races had gone decently, and the race that I always look forward to was here. The district cross country race, and I was expected to win this race. The race had begun and I was leading the race the whole way, crossed the finish line, and that made me a 2 time district champion. I was excited, and I knew I had done well because my coach was very happy with my performance. My coach always got interviewed, and got asked a lot of question about me I remember him saying this to an interviewer after my race, “I thought she ran a very controlled race today, she is a rare talent and it’s a privilege to be around her”. I then went to the state race; I was a junior and more experienced. I started of the race in the top 10, as I was running I felt a slight bit uncomfortable. As I ran down every hill I felt like I was about to pass out. My eyesight would go blurry, and the last half of the race was a struggle for me. Finishing up the race on the track getting 5th place is how my junior year ended.

It was the summer of my senior year and I had been going to get checkups with my doctor in Portland, Oregon. It turns out that I had arthritis. The arthritis was in my elbows, finger joints, wrist joints, and knees. My doctor told me there was a possibility that I wasn’t going to be able to run anymore. Once I heard this from my doctor I burst into tears, I couldn’t stop doing something that I loved to do, and I also didn’t want to let my coach down. It was my last year to become a state champion and I didn’t want to throw away a season of cross. My doctor then told me that there was one thing I could do, and that was called joint injections. Since they were going to have to use so many injections for all my joints I had to be put to sleep. The feeling was weird, like nothing I’ve ever felt before. One second I could hear the doctor talking to me and the next minute the doctor’s voice was slowly fading away, and I felt like I was floating on a big pile of clouds.

It’s been one month since I got the procedure done to me, and I wasn’t running because my doctor didn’t allow it at the moment. Cross country had finally came a long, and I was really out of shape, I was starting to get a little scared because I had no summer training what so ever. My coach knew about all that I had went through that summer, and saw at every practice that I was trying hard to come back from a bad summer illness. On workout days my coach would make me run with the guys. Especially when we ran the famous “timed miles.” It was the last timed mile workout of my high school cross country season, and I put so much work into this practice. I ended up running the fastest all time on the girls timed mile list. During practices my coach would say a name of any athlete in the state that was in the top 4, but one he used the most was “Baldovino”. He would say “let’s go champ you want this, Baldovino is right there. This last name was used a lot by my coach because this girl was a 2 time state champion in cross country; it was my goal, and dream to be what she was.

The district race was finally here, I was nervous the whole day. I warmed up with my team, did drills, and had a talk about goals and strategies. Before the race started my coach talked to all the girls and said “no matter how this race turns out know that this team of girls is the best that I have ever coached.” The official called all the teams to the line, and in a matter of time there were 70 girls on one line ready to race. The gun went off and we began to race. I lead the race from start to finish, and won the race by almost a minute. I had become a 3 time district champion, and was off to state the next week, with a very important goal in mind.

The gun went off at the 3a/2a/1a cross country state championships I felt an adrenaline rush, and wasn’t thinking anything but to run my heart out. The whole first mile I was focusing on the girl in first. I was just concentrating on staying on her heels and not losing contact. I kept having thoughts running through my head, and they were all about having no regrets when the race was over. One mile had passed and it was a tied race between me and “Baldovino”. The grass felt squishy and muddy. Every stride that was being taken was splattering mud onto my legs, and the coldness of the weather was making my hands go numb. As me and my competition were coming up to the second mile I remember my coach saying “once you get to the second mile give it all you got and don’t be afraid to lead.” I did exactly as my coach had told me, and attacked that hill and it gave me a big lead on “Baldovino”.  It was the last 700 meters of the race and I could hear the announcer announcing the leaders and I heard my name being called, it made me feel good, and I wanted to just finish the race already. The last 300 meters were finished on a track with hundreds of people surrounding it. That got me all pumped up, and sooner or later there I was on my way to the finish on the nice blue track, being cheered in by lots of my teammates and people. 10 minutes later the top ten finishers get called to get their medals. They went from the 10th finisher all the way to 1st.  The announcer was on his last medal “and this year’s 2008 3a/2a/1a cross country state champion Nancy Cardenas” and he placed the medal around my neck. This was the greatest feeling of my life, I felt very accomplished.

Winning this race meant so much to me, not only because it’s what I’ve always wanted to accomplish in life, but because my coach was always there for me. He coached me since I was a freshman all the way to my senior year.  He always knew what was best for me, and knew what it was going to take time for me to win, and be the best. Once I finished racing at state my senior year my coach came up to me, and he was so happy, I looked up at him and he had tears in his eyes. I knew this race meant as much to him as it meant for me. Now that all my goals were complete in high school I never got to say to him that he was the greatest coach I ever had.