The city of Riverside is cursed. It’s like this city knows that I am coming and plans for bad things to happen to me. This weekend was no exception. I came, it attacked me, and I left with even greater hated towards it than ever before. I hope that I never have to go back.
When the team travels we always end up getting really nice rental cars. I think the track team is on the Gold Presidential membership with Hertz or some crazy shiz like that. So Instead of the big white 15 passenger vans that other teams cruise around in, we get hooked up with like three Volvos. It’s pretty sick. On the way from the airport to our hotel I was late on calling driver, or shotgun, or even window for that matter and I was stuck in the middle of the back seat next to Travis, who needs to spread his legs 4 feet apart to give the “Illusion” of a larger package. He’s not fooling anyone, we all shower together. The drive was miserable and hot and long. Traffic was horrible and what should have been a 40 minute drive turned into three hours. FML. I should have known this was going to be a miserable trip, it was riverside afterall.
Early races are never my style but in Riverside where temperatures in late September easily get above 100 degrees you don’t have much choice. The course was on a dirt path around some dirty orange grove, all dirt since grass doesn’t grow in Riverside. The shoes of choice for such surface is the Nike Zoom Katana and it It just so happened that I had a brand new pair. I usually race without socks, many runners do and i’m not exactly sure why. Some say to make them lighter but I think thats just ridiculous. Anyway I think I bought into that back in high school and have been doing it ever since, and now my feet are super callused not too unlike african boys. So running without socks doesn’t usually give me any problems, but for whatever reason this new pair of shoes sliced right through those calluses and gave me some of the worst blisters of my young life. With a mile and a half left of the race a newly formed blister on my right heel ripped open and caused me some serious pain. I thought about dropping out but I couldn’t, I have never dropped out of a race and wasn’t going to start then. Plus it just looks so hardcore when someone finished a race and their foot is covered in blood, even if that person does finish in dead last.

My feet the evening after the race.

Notice the dark spot on the heel. Yeah thats blood.
So the race sucked. My cross country season may or may not be over since I finished dead last for my team and only top 12 typically travel. I blame Riverside (not my shoes). If it were like any other cross country race the course would have been on grass, but like I said grass doesn’t grow in Hell Riverside. One good things is that BYU ended up destroying the competition and winning the Invitational. Results found here.