Training in anonymity for the finish line
City Section cross-country runners push themselves to meet personal goals.
In darkness and in anonymity, Hector Garcia runs.
Once or twice a week, he rises at 4:30 a.m. and quietly leaves his Atwater home, making sure not to wake his parents and 12-year-old brother, then begins running along the streets of Silver Lake.
“It’s rare if I see anyone running or driving,” the 17-year-old L.A. Marshall High senior said. “No one is awake at that time.”
It’s part of his double workout routine that has him running up to 70 miles a week.
It’s what makes high school cross country participants so intriguing.
These are teenagers doing workouts largely on their own. There’s no dreaming of pro contracts, no ESPN camera crew following them and there’s no coach watching their every move.
They’re on the honor system. Only they know if they are giving it their best effort.
“I think it’s the challenge of running,” Garcia said. “You’re by yourself and nobody is telling you ‘Great job’ at 4:30 am.”
Other times, he runs two miles to school at 6 a.m. while other students walk, drive, ride bikes or take a bus.
“It gives you a lot of mental strength,” he said of running.
The 5-foot-3, 121-pound Garcia finished second at last year’s City Section cross country finals. He won the Bell-Jeff Invitational last month. He’s getting As in his classes this semester, so maybe running isn’t so demanding, right?
Once a year, I try to briefly leave football behind and return to the scene of my first sportswriting assignment from nearly 40 years ago — covering a league cross country meet.
I hated running in junior high. Those nasty P.E. teachers were ruthless making the gym class run around the field and took particular joy seeing 12- and 13-year-olds sweat. I found my escape in high school. You don’t have to run if you’re the basketball manager. Each time I watch a City Section cross country meet, I’m inspired by the dozens of boys and girls giving it their all on a hot day running up and down hills.
They come from all different backgrounds and nationalities. Some are tall, some are small.
Each runner is determined to make it across the finish line no matter how tough the challenge.
In a sports world where winners and losers are always singled out, in cross country, every competitor who makes it to the finish line deserves to be considered a winner, regardless of their time, because they’ve gone through so much just to reach the end.
Their commitment and refusal to give up is a lesson for all.
“It comes from inside and that’s what drives them — their personal satisfaction,” Marshall Coach Charlie Mack said of his 56 cross country runners, who spend afternoons training to reach the level of fitness required for their three-mile races.
So forgive me for not writing about football today. I needed to take a moment to salute runners like Garcia and his friends who work so hard toward completing a task that sometimes only they recognize as important.
The next time you see a cross country runner training in the neighborhood early in the morning or late at night, stop the car and say, “Great job.”