The most valuable experiences in life often happen to be the most painful ones.

If I’ve learned anything during the four years that I’ve spent as a Wheeler Lion, it’s that.

And I didn’t learn that in the classroom. No, siree.

I learned it in the one place I’d sooner expect to walk away with a concussion rather than some philosophical revelation – that is, the playing field, or, in my case, the cross country course. Thinking about it now, though, I guess it’s not so surprising, since it’s kind of hard to get a concussion from running.

I’ve been a runner for five years now. I started in eighth grade year  and have run through all four of my high school years. Prior to joining up with the running corps, my connection with sports had been somewhat tenuous. My parents never forced me to play a sport during my tender pre-school and elementary school years. I think that they knew then that I was destined not to be a sports star. And so, I was never subjected to Little League tee ball or community soccer.

I did do soccer camp for a week once. That was when I was 8. One day early that summer, I had a vision: Mia Hamm came to me in a dream and told me that I was going to be a soccer star. So I ran to my parents and told them that they needed to sign me up for community soccer right away. They knew better, and told me that I should probably try out soccer camp for a week "to see if I liked it first." The results were disastrous. I’m pretty sure that the only thing that kept me going through the week was the fact that the instructor was cute.

When I hit middle school, my parents encouraged me to try out for a sport. My sister had played basketball when she was in sixth grade, so I figured that I might as well try that. The first day of practice, the contents of my lunch ended up on the gym floor. The rest of the season wasn’t much better.

So, when eighth grade rolled around and I decided to try running, my expectations for the sport, or for myself, weren’t very high. I didn’t lose my lunch on the first day of practice, which was a sign that this "running thing" couldn’t be half bad, or it had to at least be better than basketball. I struggled for the first month or so of the season. And then, one day, I ended up placing in the top five for our team in a race against Cutler. It was amazing. And I’ve been running ever since.

During my high school career, I’ve had a lot of personal bests: the races where I finished in the top 10 and helped propel my little team to a victory, the invitational where I ran my best time on a 5k course, the time that I won a neck-and-neck sprinting match with a girl in the last one-hundred meters of the 2008 ECC championship race. (In regards to that last one, debate still abounds as to whether I won the show down due to physical superiority, or because about 20 feet from the finish line I let out this awesome Spartan roar that scared the bejesus out of the other girl. I’m a strong supporter of the latter.)

And for every great race that I’ve had, I’ve had twice as many awful races.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a good runner; I’m not built for it. But I accepted a long time ago that I was never going to be an Olympic marathoner. A rhythmic gymnast, maybe, but not a marathoner. So I run; I do my best. And in the end, whether I come in fifth, or last (and believe me, I’ve done both), what matters is that I know that I’ll be able to look back on these last four years and be proud that I was a part of something; that no matter how hard it got sometimes, I stuck with it; that I was an athlete.

Cross country has helped me to develop self discipline. It has made me work harder than I’ve ever had to work in my life. It has given me a close circle of wonderful friends. And it has given me a wonderful coach, who has stuck with me through every uphill and downhill. Literally.

Twenty years from now, no one (except for maybe my Mom) will remember how well, or how poorly, I did in any of my races. Heck, I might not even remember. But it will be hard to forget, or lose a deep sense of gratitude for the immense strides that I made while running cross country.

No pun intended.