Camp Suffering

So this summer I decided that I would go to Running Camp with my cross country team. Now of course I thought this would be one of the worst decisions I could have ever made because the words “running camp” sound absolutely torturous when placed together, but I was going to be captain so I organized it because seven other girls wanted to go.

Up until the day we had to leave I organized captains practices and made a group chat to arrange rides there and back. The group chat was named Camp Suffering because I couldn’t think of anything really clever.

Then the day to leave arrived, and one of the two greatest weeks of my summer began. They gave us super awesome New Balance bags that are great quality and hold a ton of stuff. This is now my school bag. The whole team was also rooming together in the same suite. Two people to a room, but all of the rooms were close together. The first day it was thundering so we couldn’t run, so we spent the whole afternoon together in Clarissa’s room, playing cards and pranking each other. It was a great way to start the week.

After that, the days were all pretty much the same. Wake up at 6:55, go to yoga or a morning run at 7, have breakfast, some free time, go to a running presentation (these were all pretty much the same and hecka boring), eat lunch, learn about running, go on an afternoon run (4-8 miles depending on where you went and what group your in), have dinner, free time until 10, then sleep.

Sounds terrible, but it was actually super fun. The whole time you were either running or learning about running and it was great.The team spent every minute that we weren’t in our running groups together. Meals were a blast too. People who got there earlier would save seats and tell the others what parts of the meal were best (often asking that they get more so you don’t have to wait in the line again).

Many fun things happened during this week. We made some enemies, had many laughs, and accumulated many fun stories. Sydney met this guy that she really liked, but we didn’t know how to say his name so we called him Amen. She got his snap and then ghosted him, so now we make fun of her.

Maddie and Clarissa had some encounters with people they did not like, specifically a girl named Beatrice and two eighth graders named Anna. I should clarify that it’s really Maddie who had a problem with these people. Every day there would be a new story about Beatrice from Maddie. Except she didn’t say Beatrice, she says “Beeeetrice”. So now that’s how the team knows her.

The two Anna’s ended up in my group, and they did this really fun thing where they got in front of you and would not run in a straight line, causing you to trip on them. So I called them Zig and Zag because saying “The Anna’s” or “Anna squared” was not as fun as Zig and Zag.

Another day they were serving spaghetti and meatballs in the cafeteria for lunch. I didn’t get the spaghetti, just the meatballs, because their pasta is grody. I got a normal persons portion of meatballs, about seven, because they were small. They were SO GOOD. Best meatballs I had ever eaten. Maddie agreed with me, so of course we asked Kimmie and Sydney to get us more, since they had just gotten back. Kimmie brought over twenty meatballs, then at all of them. So Maddie and I went up and got more ourselves. We walked back to our seats, in front of the whole cafeteria, with a plate full of 50 or so meatballs. That was fun.

We also smuggled bread sticks into our room to eat later because they were also the greatest bread sticks ever. Think olive garden bread sticks but better.

The best day of the week though was Wednesday. That was Lake Day. You had to run up many large hills before you finally got to run down another hill (that was basically a death trap because it was so steep) and get to the lake. My group did six miles, but others did more. That day all of the groups were in one place to go swimming in the lake. We had a picnic lunch and got to lay on the beach all day. Clarissa lived up to her name Radishh.hhh too because she got a terrible burn. She even said out loud “I don’t need sunscreen”. Turns out she did.

The last day was bitter sweet. We were sad to be leaving, but we were also very tired and needed some time off. The last day was also the hardest. We had to run up a small mountain. We gained 800 feet in less than a mile. I felt like I was walking the whole time.

I would not recommend running camp to anyone who hates running with a burning passion. But if you have people to go with, it would be super fun.

Also so sorry if I already wrote a blog about this. I was too lazy to go back and check.