Smells Like Team Spirit

Saturdays are my sleeping in day. Always have been. I've always felt cheated if for some reason I had to get up early, or, God forbid, set my alarm.

At 7:15 this morning -- Saturday -- my alarm went off. Serious bummer.

If it had been for work that I was getting up, I would have hit snooze until I was late. But as soon as I realized why my alarm was going off, my feet hit the floor. I was too nervous sleep any longer anyway.

The race.

I've mentioned that I've never been any kind of athlete -- that I've never been on a team. I may not have mentioned how in high school I hated the athletes and thought there was nothing more ridiculous than team spirit. The athletes were the ones torturing me and my friends. We hated pep rallies. The athletes were the popular people -- why did the whole school have to come together to celebrate them? Didn't they already have it easy enough? There wasn't a team spirited bone in my body.



It's something I've worried about since joining Team In Training. I was wary of the "WOO HOO! GO TEAM!" chants, the team socials and competitions. And I was terrified of the actual races. Not the running part -- the "team" aspect.



And the sheer numbers! I like small, manageable groups -- no more than can sit around a table and participate in a conversation together. So when I picked up my race number -- 6889 -- I wondered if that meant that 6888 people had signed up ahead of me -- and more would follow.



I don't know how many people were in the race, but when we all lined up, I felt like I had been dropped into a sea of people. The crowd closed in around me as more and more people found their place behind the starting line.

At that moment I was relieved to find several other team members to stand with, and thrilled to find that one of them ran at my pace and wanted to run with me.

Finally the mob began moving. The clock was already at 3+ minutes by the time we crossed the starting line. And off we went.

It wasn't so bad, maybe because we were at the back of the pack. It was the first time I'd had a running partner, and it really did make the overall experience more pleasant. It even seemed to go by more quickly.

We even passed people! One of the things I've hated so far when running in Central Park is that I'm constantly being passed and never passing anyone. But in the race, we passed lots of people. Granted, some of them were walking and some of them were in wheelchairs, but some of them were running. That felt great.

Throughout the race, several bystanders called out "Go Team In Training!" as we ran by. And Team In Training participants from other cities who had come to NY for the race gave us the thumbs up or words of encouragement as they passed.

As we rounded the last turn in the race and could see the finish line, the adrenaline really did kick in and we picked up the pace. We could see one of the team mentors (the social captain with the very loud voice) standing near the finish line, and when she saw us, she started yelling "Go Team In Training! Go Tara! Come on girls, you're almost there!" She didn't know my name, but I'm sure she'd have yelled it if she had known it. I was very pleased at that moment that she had such a loud voice. I think we could hear her from 100 meters away!

I felt surprisingly good throughout the race and felt incredible afterwards. I didn't even know my time -- had forgotten to look as I crossed the finish line -- but I felt really good about my performance. And I was surprised to find myself shaking hands and patting other team members on the back, congratulating them, and playfully punching my running partner in the shoulder -- "You did great!" She had done really well. It was her first time ever running over three miles. I was impressed.

As I walked with another new team friend to get some brunch, we passed other team members and asked how they felt, congratulated them, and they did the same. And even people who hadn't run the race saw our numbers and asked us how we had done, congratulated us on a good run.

So being part of a team isn't so bad. In fact, I love the feeling that I'm not alone out there. I love the support. And I love that we are all part of a bigger community of runners, and that even non-runners seem to appreciate the effort that we're putting out to cross the finish line.

My stats (I'm not even sure what some of this means):

LOTT, JOANNA
# 6889

Overall Place: 3096

Gender Place: 1610

Age Place: 671

Finish Time: 52:14

Net Time: 48:16

Pace/Mile: 12:04

AG Time: 48:02

AGGenderPlace: 1634

AG %: 40.0 %

Last time I ran this loop on my own, my time was 50:18. So I'm quite pleased with my progress! (The finish time is without subtracting the three minutes or so that had gone by before I even crossed the starting line, so I'm looking at Net Time and Pace.)

Final thoughts on the subject: Go Team!