Boxed-In

You are standing at the starting line of the 1500 meter race, toeing the waterfall line and maybe getting in a quick stride or two. You anxiously jump up and down while the starter assigns a heat and position to everyone else competing. You are the second runner on the inside, and there are 17 other girls on the outside lanes who clearly don’t plan on staying there long. The man walks in front of the group, gives a few last minute instructions that everyone there has heard a hundred times, and the gun goes off. Half of the runners on the outside push forward, and with the bend of the waterfall line aiding them, stride ahead of you and step in front. The rest of the girls started off a little slower and are now falling in behind you within the first hundred meters. You are now boxed in. 

Being boxed in is the worst. You feel as if you are in a herd of livestock and in this position one can only hope that the race soon spaces out enough to find a gap and break free. Even if the pace of the clump is a good pace for you, it is still usually best to be free so that you can strategize better and work your way toward the front of the group. When you are stuck in the middle of five or more people, you always seem to be on the verge of falling off the track, and your feet are constantly in a tangle of colorful spikes that threaten to trip you, or worse, cut your leg with a spike. Being boxed in is simply just stressful and anxiety-inducing for me. I always feel as if I am in an uncomfortably precarious position and need to try to find my way to the outside, which is generally what you want to do if you feel that you can pass the clump.

Despite what my last paragraph may let on, there are times in which being boxed in is not always a negative thing. In times when you don’t feel like you have enough energy or fight to get around the group, than you can just stick to the inside and let the clump break up in its own, which it usually will within the first 400 meters. You can even use your position on the inside as a way to motivate you to stick with the group if they are helping you push the pace of your race, then in the last 200 meters of the race you can try to fight your way to the head of the pack, which is probably a lot smaller now than it was at the beginning of the race. My coach always says, “Get to the front of the pack if you want to get a better position with just one splurge of energy and effort!” That is of course given that you have it in you to push ahead of the pack, which one certainly does not always have. It is always a great feeling when you can push ahead though, because you are passing a lot of people in a short distance when dealing with packs.

But like I said, being boxed in is the worst! J