Naps on Naps on Naps

There are a few phases every distance runner goes through each year in the transition from track to cross country.  First is the summer training phase, where you basically turn into a machine capable only of napping, running, and eating.  Mileage goes up, and number of pants that actually fit you correctly go down.  You eat entire boxes of Otter Pops each week, exclaiming, "Gotta get those electrolytes!" as each one goes down, knowing full well that they're basically just frozen sugar sticks.  Next comes the "Back to School" phase.  Everyone is back in town, and stoked as can be to be training again.  You have a few weeks between when you get back to school and when classes start, so you're free to continue your habits of sleeping in late and running whenever is convenient for a short period of time.  Then you have all of the compliance meetings, team barbecues, and exciting discussions about what the season will look like.  The workload from school isn't too big, so you say to yourself, "Ah, yes.  This whole semester will probably stay like this and be relatively easy."  And if you listen closely, you can actually hear the lady from Game of Thrones whisper, "Oh, my sweet summer child."  The fourth and final phase of cross country is the Peak Phase.  The money is in the bank, as the old folks would say, and all that's left to do is trust in the hard work you've put in, peak, and compete.  It's the championship phase, the part of the season that you look forward to every week leading up to it.
The third phase is what we are currently in.  The Grind Phase.  This is where you put in some of your hardest workouts, where you wake up for early morning practices and badger the training room staff almost daily for new stretches and more ice bags wrapped onto your body.  It's where you have three or four exams in one week, plus two papers and a new design for rocket fuel due on the same day.  It's where life gets a little bit challenging, but it's also where you can take yourself from being good to great.  Yeah, that summer work is incredibly important to build your base and get you ready for the year.  But if you let your effort slip when things start to get tough, you won't get to see the results of that hard work come the end of the season.  Nobody wins a national title off of the first race of the season alone.  This is the phase where you are no longer just competing against the ideas of your opposing teams every day in practice.  This is where you have to start competing against yourself.  You have to be willing to accept that there will come a point in the workout where your body wants to quit.  Your mind might try to tell you that you can't possibly run another interval, but you have to tell both your mind and your body that you don't really care what they think is possible because you're going to make it big and that's going to hurt.  Maybe you'll have to overcome some setbacks.  Maybe it feels like the hardest thing you've ever done.  But if you can choose to not just make it through the Grind Phase, but come through it stronger than you started, you can do just about anything in this sport.