I Ran My First SEC Cross Country Championships: Lessons from a Tough Race

In two days, I was running my first ever SEC cross country championships, and it felt like the moment came around so quickly. But the reality is it had been a long journey to get here. This is my third year running for LSU (here is a look at my freshman season at LSU), but it is the first year that I have actually mattered on the team. My whole life had been soccer, then track, then signing to run in college. But my first cross country season ended with injury. My second season, same story. This year was finally different.

Building Momentum Heading Into SEC Cross Country Championships

The season started well with a 26-second PR in the 5K. Then I ran my first ever 8K, and two weeks later came the rematch where I ran 24:16, over a minute faster. More importantly, I finished second on the team, which meant there were real expectations for the first time in my college career. What I did at the SEC Championships in Tennessee would finally matter.

We landed in Knoxville a couple of hours before our shakeout run. The course was straightforward but demanding. If I had to describe it, it was a straight line repeated six times. You go straight for a while, hit a hairpin turn, go straight again with a little hill, then hairpin turn again. Repeat that three times and you have the University of Tennessee cross country course.

Pre-race nerves and a comment that stuck with me

The night before the race, I was sitting in my hotel room when a YouTube comment caught my eye. Someone wrote that they had just watched one of my high school 800 meter races and called it incredibly ballsy. They said they could not wait for a new video. But what I felt like they were really asking without saying it was where did that spark go? That hit me harder than any pre-race speech could have.

Race morning came, and the energy around the course was intense. We previewed the course on a five-mile shakeout and did four strides to get loose. We even had lunch with the Texas A&M guys at Cava, a crossover moment for SEC running. One of their guys described the course as almost as good as theirs, which is saying something.

The race did not go as planned

By 2K, we were already way further back than we needed to be. We were sitting around 80th or 90th place and had already lost our pack. We were not even running as a team anymore, which is the number one rule of cross country. You always want to try to run with your teammates, and we were already separated.

By 4K, flipping one of the hairpin turns and seeing my teammates way back there, it was clear we had already lost the team battle. The race as a team contest was over. But I figured I might as well just fight the people around me. Bring that competitive drive back. Do not let that spark go. And I would say I did that well, which is why I am not entirely mad about how the race went.

Finishing second on the team but disappointed

I ended up running second on the team again, but our team finished 13th. The only team we beat was Vanderbilt. We sold ourselves on a pipe dream heading into that race, and the result was humbling. I fought well, just against the wrong people. I should have been fighting in the next pack up, not scrapping for positions in the 80s.

The good news about a sport like cross country is that it is easy to move forward. By the time indoor track rolls around, nobody cares what happened during the cross country season. It is over. You get a clean slate, and for me that clean slate comes with a big goal: cracking the sub-4 barrier in the mile.

What comes next: NCAA regionals and track season

Some of us had one more opportunity at NCAA regionals, which would be a 10K. That was going to be the furthest race distance I had ever run. It was going to be fun, and more importantly, it was going to be a good mental battle. Hopefully the kind of reset that would correct the mentality heading into track season.

Looking back, the SEC Championships taught me something I needed to learn. You can have all the fitness in the world, but if you do not execute your race plan and run as a team, none of it matters. Cross country is unforgiving that way. You can not hide behind individual performances when the team result is what counts. But that is also what makes it beautiful. You learn to be accountable not just to yourself, but to the six other people wearing the same jersey. And that lesson is going to carry forward into everything I do next.