Flashbacks to Friday Corps Runs

So picture this: it's 5:30 a.m., you're surrounded by 1200 other half-asleep people, and the smell of powdered eggs and greasy bacon penetrates every follicle in your nose. Then you start to run in a ebbing mass "in celebration" of the next day's Aggie football game. Not gonna lie... this was not the most looked-forward-to tradition in my experience in the Corps. Quite the opposite actually. I hated the route, the smell of the breakfast I was about to [not] eat in an hour, and I hated seeing Reveille run the whole thing like it was nothing. Young men training in the military didn't bother me, but seeing her glide through what was usually a struggle for me, did.

Looking back on it, it wasn't a horrible experience; I did get out of it some good memories. For instance, running behind the class of '07 who decided to clean-out Northgate of all whiskey the night/morning before a run. Bad idea for them.... even worse for the juniors (me) who had to smell the alcohol seeping out of their pores for two and a half miles. Another was when Dr. Gates ran with us the day before he left to be the Secretary of Defense. That was pretty moti.

It never failed, though. I always thought at one point I was going to "fall out" of the run. But what also never failed was the support from my buddies and upperclassmen. I constantly heard, "Jules, you can do it!", "Akers, get your ass up here!" (threats do have a motivating factor), "You've got it, Tubbs. Breakfast is next!". (Ten bucks if you know who said that last one) I also loved running onto the quad hearing Alec belt out "I was born in a briar patch!" as we sang our Animal jody. It all added up to get me through it.

It's great to have those memories on runs like today's. It was a long day and my mind was completely overthrown. I started running thinking that it would all clear up, but it didn't. Instead of being able to think through things, I focused on how much I didn't want to do this and spent my 35 minutes reasoning with myself on quitting. A few times I turned down my music and thought back to those Corps Runs and put myself back into that mode. I couldn't stop because I'd look weak in front of my underclassmen and I didn't want to disappoint my buddies or my upperclassmen, so I didn't. I never fell out of a Corps Run and I refused to do it tonight.

So there we go, a 35:40 minute 3.15 mile run. That makes two successful (relatively) weeks of 10k training! Now to see where week three takes me...

[Here's an estimated route for what the Corps Run entailed]