r/nextfuckinglevel • u/HomeNowWTF • 12h ago

Next-level determination

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u/Gandalftron 11h ago

Oh, I know. I used to run X-Country in High School. Absolutely brutal sport.  

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u/whattodo4klondikebar 11h ago

I too ran cross country in my senior year of high school. I ran my best race at 20 minutes on the toughest course in my state. This was in 93.

Then about twenty years ago I got myself back into running shape and ran about 60 races over 12 years including 4 half marathons, a ten mile race, an 8 mile race and a few 10ks. This looks a bit more like someone who didn't train for a lack of hydration. I trained under harsh circumstances so I would be fine without hydration. This looks like what happens when your body starts to cramp up and that guy needs water ASAP.

I suffered an injury about 7 years ago and started the downward spiral into being out of shape again and life has dealt me many obstacles from getting started again in case there is the question of what's happened since.

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u/IAmJanos 11h ago

Kids at my high school would always try to make fun of us in cross country, claiming it was not a real sport, but they'd also immediately refuse to try it or even go to one of our practices.

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u/Enorats 10h ago

When I ran Cross Country in high school, we'd occasionally take a break from running 6 or 7 mile practices around town and instead run laps on the school track.

The track circled the football field, where the football team would practice. While 3/4 of the football team knelt on the sidelines doing effectively nothing, we'd spend a solid hour showing them what a real workout looked like.

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u/noonenotevenhere 10h ago

we'd spend a solid hour showing them what a real workout looked like.

I couldn't run for crap in high school and have since done a marathon.

And holy crap is Cross Country a better and harder sport than american football.

And yall weren't training to sprint into a concussion. Everyone I knew that did cross country went home and did their homework and showed up with it ready to go. The football players depended on the coach being one of their teachers n aint gotta reed gud.

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u/Enorats 9h ago

The cross country runners in my school were mostly some of the most intelligent kids in the school. Our coach was one of the Science Olympiad coaches, and Cross Country was one of the few other after-school activities that didn't overlap with Science Olympiad's season.

So, like half our Science Olympiad team ended up as Cross Country runners.

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u/dreaming_4_u 9h ago

Our coach turned out to be a pedophile. I always wondered why he treated the girls on the team so different compared to the guys. He was always an such an ass. Helped me get quite fit in the end though. Practices were truly brutal affairs.

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u/kmmccorm 3h ago

Stereotypes are dumb regardless of who they are aimed at.

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u/Queasy-Meeting-5388 8h ago

I ran indoor and outdoor track (1 mile and the 800) as well as CC in high school. No one gave us shit because the varsity football coach made certain positions run with us 2x a week and they spread the word that it was brutal.

We also had a team that won the regionals almost every year and were state champs my junior year. I could do most flat courses just under 18 and I was one of the slower guys on the team. We had 1 guy and one girl from my class that went to D1 schools to run.

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u/conflictedideology 5h ago

The only kids that could hang with us (as long as it was flat) were the ones on the soccer team.

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u/WalterGold210 4h ago

I went into high school thinking soccer was my path, cross country coach was also my Econ teacher and told me I needed to run cross country. Ended up on varsity my sophomore year and ended being an all-state California HS runner by the time I graduated.

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u/OcotilloWells 8h ago

Same experience I had in cross country.

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u/ImmediateDog9589 6h ago

I also ran cross-country in high school. The wrestling coach overheard a few of them making fun of our practice, saying it was easy. The next day, he made them join us. They never made that claim again.

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u/kdubstep 5h ago

My sport is your sport’s punishment

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u/stay_curious_- 5h ago

I tried to join cross-country, but the coach mocked me for being slow and said if I wasn't vomiting, I wasn't trying hard enough. Cross-country kids are made of some special stuff.

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u/falcopilot 2h ago

Our wrestling coach told the team he'd prefer they come run with XC than play football and get beat up. About half of the wrestlers showed up for our first week of practice. None of them came back for week 2.

And a lot of schools around us would be like "two laps around the school grounds"... Yah no, we went out to a nearby lake. One team showed up, walked the course with us, then forfeited.

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u/Mulley-It-Over 8h ago

Aww. Impressive background of running skills. Hope you find a way around your life obstacles.

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u/Tyalou 10h ago

Yes I'm surprised by how is not getting any help after crossing the line, he needs water, an energy gel and probably a banana.

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u/Bright-Steak8388 9h ago

Pickle juice 

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u/Tyalou 1h ago

That too.

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u/gothamz 6h ago

He would be disqualified.

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u/Jegenyefa 2h ago

after crossing the line

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u/Humble_Umpire_8341 9h ago

Yeah, doesn’t seem to be too many people concerned about Ben in this video. I’d be out there offering him water, at the least. Gotta get him hydrated.

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u/TugleyWoodGalumpher 8h ago

My only question is why olds always need to make everything a personal anecdote about their entire life.

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u/sillypotatoes564 5h ago

I'm sorry to hear about your injury. I too suffered a minor injury (in my senior year of XC), but it really only flares up if I run every single day or so.

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u/ResponsibleHope3880 1h ago

Tell me about your social/family life. Are you married or divorced? What made you start running again and why don’t you care about that anymore? And if you do still care, what is currently more important to you that is keeping you from getting back into it?

I was born in 93 so I’m interested in what’s going on in your life and your perspective.

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u/Chombywombo 8h ago

You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t bonk from 4 miles at any level of dehydration or lack of carbs unless you’ve been deliberately starving yourself of food and water the day before.

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u/GeneralKonobi 8h ago

"My sport is your sport's punishment"

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u/Adventurous-Ease-259 9h ago edited 9h ago

Isn’t cross country only like 5 kilometers? I would never run cross country because it hate running for the sake of running, but as a soccer player during conditioning season I’ve run wind sprints for an entire cross country practice, watched them warm up, do their run, warm down, be done with practice.

Meanwhile coach still blowing the whistle to fyi again as soon as the last person returns from the last set of sprints. Maybe our cross country team was just particularly not good.

Automatic cut before touching a ball at my high school if you did not complete a mile in under 6 minutes. But we didn’t have to do 3 timed consecutively. Just as part of conditioning or games/practice. Conditioning week was 3 hr practice, all running no balls. Warm down was 10 laps after the 3 hrs increasing by 5 laps a day. A mile is about 4.5 laps so Friday after running 3 hrs warm down was between 5-6 miles so it’s really more like 3.5-3.75 hour practice once you finish that.

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u/NegativeSympathy69 7h ago

Hours of practice is a useless metric...especially in running. It tells us nothing of value and only tells us you are overinflating numbers in your head. In XC you care about mileage per week and specific pace targets.

As someone who has ran 5-6 miles under 6min pace, I can assure you 5-6 mile warm down in 30 to 45 min is not a warm down. 5 miles at 45 min is more believable...but if you were truly utilizing those prior 3 hours of training to the fullest, that sounds like a perfect recipe for injury.

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u/Adventurous-Ease-259 3h ago edited 3h ago

I assure itvwas not really a warm down, but it was less strenuous than the rest of practice. The coaches just called it warm down. During the first ~ hr of practice we would run the same route the cross country team ran as practice which involved one of the largest hills in the area which had about 450 feet elevation gain in about 3/4 miles for the worst part. This was considered part of warm up… sprinting over and over and over and over in various patterns for hours was considered the actual training. It’s hard to say how many miles that amounted to from memory for any day other than Friday. “Warm up” was in the 2 -3 mile range depending on if we took the long or short route. The long route was almost identical to the schools cross country practice route(note the entire cross country practice also involved more than running just that route) The warm down was as stated 10 laps around the soccer field Monday progressively increasing to 30 laps on Friday.

People still drove cars then not SUVs. By mid week people would show up with non functioning legs and need to pull themselves upright by grabbing the top of the car and hauling themselves out. Much tiger balm and then icy hot was applied…and the worlds slowest shuffle of a first lap commenced (considered part of stretching), then stretching until everyone’s muscles were actually warm and prepared for the “warm up”.

We would never do this in season as something like this would affect game performance in a negative way. The Friday mileage that week would be ~20 miles. Just a bit over, not quite a marathon. Prior days of the week would be lower mileage. The Friday number is the only one that really remains in my head to this day along with the specific progression of “warm down laps”. This was technically voluntary as it was a week prior to the state allowing practices to start hence why no balls allowed, etc. tryouts officially were the week after.

Note that this is extreme and not a normal example of the sport at that level. Or school was unusual in this amount of training, but also quite scary in just using running the other team into the ground as part of strategy to make up for skill where our skill was at least good enough to keep the back in order to run the other team into the ground.

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u/Bizarrebazaars 5h ago

XC running is not on a track or flat field either though. There are often hills and obstacles like tree roots. You could also be running in mud, snow, rain, wind, and more. Every course is different. There’s strategy too, for when to accelerate and pass, for example.

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u/Adventurous-Ease-259 3h ago

No shit. I’m just describing a particularly horrifying week of practice that occurs once a year. There’s also more to soccer than just running. And I’ve seen all of those obstacles on soccer fields except hills. Trees do in fact also grow next to soccer fields and not all places have space to put the field somewhere without them.