As we enter November and start to study for assessments, the ‘23-’24 fall athletic season also comes to an end. All of our teams are wrapping up, and the Bears are looking forward to entering the playoffs. For me, this is the first time I have been in a full competitive season, and indeed the past two months offered me a totally new experience.

The first day I went to the cross country practice, I started to enjoy this friendly and stress-free environment on the team. We have different plans for every week, but we usually do the same things on the same weekdays. On Mondays we go off campus to run at places near the school, while on Tuesdays mobility training is what we generally focus on; Wednesdays are often tiring, for we are usually doing track/hill workouts, and Thursdays are for strength; We normally have a meet on Saturdays, and thus we do pre-race preparations on Fridays, which are always light trainings. However, it is Mondays that leave the deepest impressions. Several times we ran by different farms and fields, where we had a fantastic view of the fall season of New England, which was often an encouragement and a motivation to keep running, no matter how tired we already were. Once coaches took us to the Twin Lakes Road, and we ran around the two lakes for 50 minutes. As exhausted as we were in the end, we were amazed by the views during the running. 

As a group, we are always full of joy. When we ran together, we talked about different topics. Two topics were physics ( we have a physics teacher as our coach), and other schools’ courses. When we were near the end and most of us were tired, we were always encouraging each other to keep going forward. “You got it!” “Keep pushing, keep pushing!” is what we hear the most from our teammates. We always enjoy our races and running together as a team. Occasionally, we have team bonding activities, where we hang out together and do interesting things. Ultimately, we are not just here to get good results for every meet, but for our shared passion in running. 

In the end, we are always trying our best every time, and wish us good luck on the last meet of this season–New England’s. GO BEARS.