First Time At State

Laughter fills the van as we make jokes about each other. When we arrive at the stoney creek in, we grab our bags and walk into the log cabin themed hotel. We settle in a conference room as our coaches give us our roommates and what room we are in. Slowly everyone leaves to go to their room except for me, I stand there awkwardly, confused on why I didn’t get a room. Then my coach says “I didn’t call your name, Jackson?” “No” I said he then replies “Well You can just join Chrisitan and his room” I am happy because this was the room that I wanted to be in the whole time. I knock on the door waiting for someone to answer THUMP THUMP THUMP I knock for a while until Brandon opens the door. We meet face to face and I say “It looks like i’m joining your room” “Ok, Sweet” he says. The rest of the night consists of us running around the hotel knocking on doors and finding where our other teammates are staying. 

I look up to only see the blazing sun, my heart racing like a race car going faster than the speed of sound. Try to settle down but it's to no avail. I am so focused that there is no way that I can run slow. We are standing in a group waiting for the races before us to start when all of the sudden all of the lights go out. I am so confused what just happened when the announcer came on the mic and said “Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry for the inconvenience but it seems as though the power has gone out we are trying our best to get it back on” all I can think is why is this happening to me, it is now 11:45 and I was supposed to run at 6:30 this day because of rain delays and now this has caused my nerves to build up. I stand there trying to stay warm so I don’t pull a muscle when I finally run. Then the lights slowly start to come on. The clerk sends up to our position and I stand by the start of the second turn as the heats before us finally start. I watch them run past and think my time is getting closer. I watch as the heat before me finishes and I walk on the track and as I do so I look in the stand and see thousands of people in the stands watching what seems to be only me, I place my mark and get ready. The gun goes off “BOOM” I watch as Jacob gives the stick to tripp and see tripp run along the straight away. When he hits the tape I run going as fast as I can “STICK” he yells as instantly I put my hand back the cold metal of the stick hits my hand and I run as fast as I can gaining ground on the person to my left and my right. I run up to my teammate Sam and  yell “STICK” I place the stick in his and and he takes it we are in first at the time but the lane on the inside of us is really fast and they catch him, but I am so happy we qualified for finals that I scream “LETS GO” the relief is nothing but spectacular, I see my teammate and we run up to each other and do that thing where you jump and bump into each other I don’t know what its called, but we are both ecstatic that we just ran that fast. 

The hot humid air as I enter the van to head back to the hotel to get some sleep before the meeting tomorrow, makes me sweat more than ever. He hopped into the van and started heading back. I don't know what was said or what happened, but I remember laughing so hard that my cheeks hurt. I remember going into kwik trip to get some food for the night and going to sleep I remember how fun that day was and How I hoped to repeat it the next day.