The above image was taken at the Maryland 4A State Cross Country Championships by kids-in-motion.com. They took a picture of every finisher as they crossed the finish line.
If anybody else from the team would like to write up how their season went and what happened, just send it to me in an e-mail at: timpratt83@hotmail.com
By Tim Pratt, Class of 2001
During the summer of 2000 I put in a decent amount of mileage (40-45 miles a week) despite working 35 hours a week. I went to the cross country camp held at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. The man in charge of the camp was 1992 Olympic Marathoner Steve Spence. I even got to eat breakfast with him one morning. Anyway, the season started with a meet at Chesapeake. We just trained through it and I ended up getting 7th place. I was passed by 3 guys in the last quarter mile. The next week we hosted the Knights Invite. I was never really in the race because I was doing very intense long runs. We raced at the Center of Applied Technology North against Glen Burnie and Chesapeake. We also trained through this meet. I won the boys race by a large margin. It was kind of a cheap victory because Glen Burnie's top guy (a 4:29 miler) was just coming back from an injury. We raced at Annapolis the next week. We had done some speed work and my legs were feeling snappy. I went out hard and lead for a while. I completely locked up at "Kill Hill" and faded to 7th. Some boy from Northeast threw his arms up in the air as he passed me right before the finish line like he had just won the Olympics or something. I visited Lock Haven University the next day and talked briefly with the assistant coach. The campus is nice and I decided that's where I would love to spend the next 4 years of my life. Our next meet was the Meade Autumn Classic at Blob's Park. This was the first meet that I rested up for and I ran a good race. I was in the lead group with some of the best runners in the state for most of the race. Four people passed me on the final 100 meter hill and I ended up in 15th place. I beat all three boys from Northeast after their little escapade the week before. Our next meet was the North County Challenge at Old Mill. Our coach wanted us to run really good at this race and everybody was well rested. For this reason I think that most of the team peaked at this meet including me. Pickett from Meade, Kirby from Old Mill, and myself broke away from everybody. The race felt like a jog. I wasn't even breathing hard. Pickett took off in the last half-mile on a narrow section of the course. I couldn't get around Kirby to go after him so he built up a decent lead. I finally got around Kirby and took off after Pickett, but he was out of range. Then with about 150 meters to go Kirby passed me. I got third and beat the Northeast trio again. We had the County Championships the next week and I ran the worst race of my entire life. We had gone to Arundel to run the course two-days before counties and I ran it harder than I should have and it beat me up pretty good. I was still feeling it the day of Counties and was tired after my warmup. Needless to say, I got spanked. I felt horrible the entire next week leading up to the Regional Championships and was pretty worried going into the race. The race went out pretty slow and I felt strong for the entire race until about 800 meters from the finish. I held on even though 4 people passed me in the last 50 meters but still qualified for States running a time of 16:46, the third fastest ever by a North County runner. The week leading up to States, coach decided I needed to get stronger and I blew myself out doing hill workouts. At the State Championships I was totally unprepared for the fast start. I wasn't as focused as I should have been and was there more for the experience. My main goal was to make it to States, and I never really thought past that. To summarize the race, I went out too slow and then tried to make it up all at once. I got tripped, lost my my momentum, and died horribly. I then just held on to finish. I took a few days off because my hip had been hurting. I then ran a 5-mile cross country race in a little more than 29 minutes. I got sick, and missed a bunch of days. I then came back and indoor track practice had started. My first day back and was doing plyometric excercises and drill after having barely moved in a week and felt my hamstring strain. I still tried to run through it but ended up missing even more time. I started going to a physical therapist for my hamstring and my hip. I missed a total of a little over a month and started jogging again on New Year's Eve. I went back to practice after about a week of jogging and coach decided that he was going to get me in shape in time to run in the meets. My hip was still killing me so I went to another doctor who diagnosed it as Bursitis and gave me a cortisone shot. I missed some days and came back and trained the whole month of February. On March 2, I felt my other hamstring strain after really running hard on hills one day. Like an idiot I still tried to run through it and injured it even more. I did this a few times and missed the entire month of March. I ended up starting to jog again in the beginning of April. I wanted to just skip the outdoor track season because I wanted to come back slow. Besides, I had already missed the entire indoor track season. My father called me a baby and said I had no heart so I went back to practice. I ran the 5000 at the Meade Stampede surprisingly good considering that it was off of two-weeks of jogging and totally wasted myself. We then had a little tri-meet three days later when it was about 90 degrees during the previous days. I was still thrashed from the Meade meet and I was sick. I think I suffered from heat exhaustion and missed another week of training. This put me back to stage 1 and I was feeling very weak. I ran in a few more meets and got my brains kicked in. Everybody from the other schools remembered me from cross country season and knew I got hurt so I wasn't that embarassed. I didn't run at Regionals because I felt my hamstring hurting after doing 50 meter dashes at practice and it got worse at Counties. It wouldn't hurt on my distance runs, just when I did speed workouts. So now I have started my summer training so I'm going to be in great shape in the fall when I report to Lock Haven University for cross country practice.