There are some things that need to reenter your life before you realize how much you missed them. For me, one of those things is running with the team.

Since deciding to eschew track, I’ve been running solo. It’s been a good introduction for the training to come: a little lonely. I move in and out of traffic and past pedestrians whom I’ll never see again. My speed is like a partition that separates me from the world. But my teammates used to be there with me on this side of it.

I’m still confident that I made the right decision to abstain from track. And, frankly, I hang out with my teammates (for that’s how I still see them) all the time. But it was still nice yesterday when i (almost literally) ran into them on one of our familiar routes. I joined them for the remainder of their run: 7 miles. I think they, too, were happy to have one of their own back– We could be isolated together, just as we’re used to.

I have officially resigned from the track team.

I will be student teaching this spring, which means that I have the work load of a full-time teacher (with no pay). Trying to do this and track at the same time would be possible, but one of the two pursuits would suffer. My impractical side wanted to try both, but reason eventually won out. I need to teach well more than I need to have another semester running with the team.

That last bit’s important; I will still be running, just not with the team. In fact, I’ll probably be running more than ever soon. No track means I don’t have to waste time training for the two-mile. I can finally get to the marathon training that’s always appealed to me.

That’s right. I’ll finally join most of my readers on the long (long, long) lonely road of marathon training. At least in a month or so. For now I’m just going to focus on getting back in shape and ramping my mileage back up.

So yesterday I realized that I had totally forgotten to share how my last xc race actually went. Here’s a review (with pictures this time!).

Here I’m about 300 meters from the finish line. I ended up finishing at 28:14, tying my PR from Paul Short. At first I was a little upset to have missed PRing by so little. But in a way, it’s appropriate. It’s like I proved that I was performing at maximum capacity in both of those races. Or slacking off in both. We’ll say the former.

Classy guy, right? Here I am in my post-race glory, smoking a cigar. I don’t often smoke cigars (and never cigarettes for obvious reasons) but it’s a tradition for the men’s team to have one after their final xc race, as a salute to the end of four wonderful years.

Being sentimental, I knew from my freshmen year that I would one day smoke a cigar on an xc course. Being a writer, I love symbols. Being nuts, I love ritual.

All in all, that cigar tasted pretty sweet.

Late Saturday afternoon, I found myself standing over my bathroom sink, wiping flecks of shaving creme off my ears. I was clean shaven for the first time in two weeks.

I was done.

The top runners had been growing out our beards to bring luck to our one last race together. And now it was over.

It was a bitter, bittersweet realization. I ran my last cross-country race ever. I am no longer an xc athlete.

I got a little depressed, standing over the sink. But why? After all, I’m still a runner. I haven’t lost anything that makes me who I am.

As I washed my xc career down the sink, I felt a little ashamed for getting so down. I’m 22 years old; my running career is just beginning. I want to shuffle through marathons and even ultras before I die.

So let’s just keep cross country at what it was: an apt beginning for another turtle runner.

Tomorrow at noon I will be on the starting line at Lehigh, waiting for the gun to start my race.

Certainly not my last race, but my last race with the team. My last race as a cross-country athlete.

Which means this: though my legs are shot, though my cold hasn’t yet left me, though the weather isn’t looking great, I have to do one thing. I have to run my balls off.