Chris Derrick: Perseverance
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #1)
Posted May 13th, 2008 at 2:22 PM by Chris Derrick
Section: News & Results, Elite Athlete Blogs, High School, Chris Derrick
Welcome to the official blog of Chris Derrick; the 2007 Gatorade High School Cross Country Runner of the Year and 5k record holder! Make sure to bookmark chrisderrick.thefinalsprint.com and check back every other Tuesday for Chris’ latest entries as he completes his senior year of high school running and begins his NCAA career at Stanford!
I’d like to begin my blogging experience by sharing one of the most epic runs I’ve ever had, and one that encapsulates my team as well. First a little background. Like most distance runners, we at Neuqua Valley are pretty weird. One of our more minor quirks is our belief in the Interval Gods*. The Interval Gods hate us. They have cursed us and given us crappy weather at all of our meets and interval workouts this track season. What’s more they are trying to kill us: right after we left the NTN meet in Portland there were mudslides and now, just weeks after we left Arcadia, it is threatened by wild fires.
Fortunately we’ve managed to stay (for now) one step ahead of them. We only got a break from the interval Gods wrath at the Aracadia Invite. Arcadia doesn’t really count as we are fairly certain the Interval Gods live there. We tried to appease them by feeding some squirrels in a local park and it was going swimmingly until Danny Pawola offered them extra-sour-rye bread, which they hated. I’ll let that little tidbit set the scene for our tale…
Our Epic Run: I’d like to take you back to this Monday (4/28). It is about 40 degrees, windy, and raining (honestly it’s almost May, what the heck is wrong with Illinois?) and we are pretty discouraged by the whole ordeal and the whole curse of the Interval Gods thing. So after a morning run we have a 60 minute distance day on tap for the afternoon. No routes in our lovely suburbia seem appealing so we let fate decide. We take Kevin Grady, have him shut his eyes, disorient him, and have him spin around and point in a random direction. Turns out he is pointing right at the smallest girls’ softball fields.
Well it has long been a wish of ours to run some ridiculously short route over and over again for a whole run (remember that whole weird thing), so we see this as the perfect opportunity. We run over to the softball field and beginning running the perimeter. We figure we’ll last about 20 minutes at the very most. Well pretty soon we figure out each lap is taking us a minute and we have 52 minutes left on the run. So inevitably we start counting down the laps starting at 52. At first it’s a joke. Some guys leave and go run elsewhere but the top 7 stays as our quest, our destiny becomes clear: we must stay on this field until we are done.
In the beginning the going is slow, after all we are making three turns a minute and running on a friggin’ softball field in the rain and the wind. But we make it to our designated point of no return, 30 to go. We can all feel it now, feel the inevitability of our stupidity being realized. By popular demand Aaron Beattie gives a motivational speech. We sing the traditional Bon Jovi hymn, “Living on a Prayer”. We are in high spirits. But dark times still lay ahead, just after reaching the precious halfway point we find ourselves growing despondent. Negativity starts to encroach on our destiny, it would be so easy just to walk off the field and finish our run like normal people- but NO! At this point pride is on the line, the girls’ lacrosse team is watching and we have to persevere! Slowly we get back into it.
The 5 minutes from 19 to go to 14 to go fly by and then time seems to slow again as we drag on into single digits. But slowly, methodically, we trudge on. Past the 5 minute barrier, past the 4 minute barrier. The Interval Gods crank up the wind and rain but we quote The Shawshank Redemption multiple times and hope is returned. Some grow delirious from the magnitude of the experience. Finally we enter the last lap, then we come roaring down the final straightaway, holding hands chanting, “Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack!….” (I have no idea why). We reach home plate, some collapse. Tears are shed, some lie prostrate in thanks and redemption. We walk back to school, champions forever.
I’ll leave you with one last inspiration. Run fast and enjoy.
- Chris
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Tags: chris derrick, college running, college track & field, high school, high school running, high school track & field, high school XC, ncaa, ncaa track, neuqua valley, Neuqua Valley High School, stanford, stanford university, the final sprint elite athlete blog series, thefinalsprint.com elite athlete blog series, track and field
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The Final Sprint
Journey Rocks! Imagine how much better Chariots of Fire would’ve been if they did the soundtrack instead of Vangelis…
May 13th, 2008 at 3:23 pmI’m so glad they asked you to write a blog! It was a very amusing entry and I can’t wait to read more in the future. Congrats on the 5k at Arcadia and good luck with the rest of your season!
May 14th, 2008 at 7:57 pma wicked fast runner and a brilliant writer… i think i’m in looooove =P
May 22nd, 2008 at 9:14 pm[…] http://www.thefinalsprint.com/2008/0…-blog-entry-1/ […]
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:51 pmDoes anyone know why he didn’t run at the state track meet yesterday or today?
Whatever the reason, it must have been pretty serious.
May 24th, 2008 at 3:01 pmHe goes to my school and the true reason he didnt run yesterday is because he had mono.
May 26th, 2008 at 1:38 pmWho cares if the lacrosse girls were watching. Girls make many male runners run slow, get distracted, get sick…
June 5th, 2008 at 2:17 amI love this blog. Its entertaining, funny, and easy to relate to.
iMa keep reading : )
June 8th, 2008 at 7:04 pm