Thursday, September 10, 2009

Coree Woltering's Men's XC Student-Athlete Blog

Wow! We have been back in school for about two weeks now, and it has definitely been an interesting transition from summer to school. I decided to change my major from Physical Education to Biology Education. Let’s just say that the start of this year and the start of freshman year have been totally different. Last year I had some general freshman classes, a soccer skill lab, and a few other sports related classes. Now I have Biology, Bio lab, Botany, Botany lab, Chemistry, Chemistry lab, and a religion class. The start of this semester has been way more intense. Not only has it been more intense in the classroom, but with running too.

Right now I love cross country. I have always thought of myself as more of a track runner than cross country runner, but that may be changing. This summer I had one of my best summers of training and now I am excited for this season. Right now I am enjoying putting in the weeks of mileage; it is fun to do when you have a team to run with. Summer training is rough, but when we come together again in the Fall, it’s not so bad. The first 2 weeks are always the most challenging, and then it gets better.

We had our first meet at Millikin on September 1. It was a 5k for both the guys and girls. The Millikin course had more hills on it than I have ever seen. I swear it was uphill the whole time. Okay, so maybe not the whole time, but there were a lot of hills. I thought we ran well in the meet. It was only a small meet that we used as a workout, but we saw some encouraging things from it. Our first real race is Friday, September 18, at Illinois State University. I know we are all excited to finally get out there and race.

This season should be a lot of fun. We have a very young but talented team. We have 2 seniors, 2 juniors, 9 sophomores and 9 freshmen on the men’s team. I am excited to see what our team can do this year. I found a quote I really liked this week, and I thought it would be a good ending quote.

“People don't play sports because it’s fun. Ask any athlete, most of them hate it, but they couldn't imagine their life without it. It is part of them, the love/hate relationship. It’s what they live for. They live for the practices, cheers, long bus rides, invitationals, countless pairs of different types of shoes, water, Gatorade, & coaches you appreciate. They live for the way it feels when you beat the team next to you by 1 point, & you know those 2 extra sprints you ran in practice were worth it. They live for the way you become a family with your team. They live for the countless songs you sing in your head when you're running ALL those intervals They live for the competition, they live for the friends, the practices, the memories, the pain, it’s who they are. It's who we are. WE ARE ATHLETES!” –Anonymous

Well that’s all for this week,
Coree Woltering
(about Coree)

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