Simon Sanchez Junior High School
Cross Country Team, 8th Grade, 1979 - 1980
L-R: Mark, Me, Ricky
Simon Sanchez Junior High School
Cross County, 9th Grade, 1980 - 1981
My name is Patrick and I started running in 1979 on the island of Guam when I attended Simon Sanchez Junior High School in the village of Yigo. My friends Ricky and Mark were on the cross country team and my physical education teacher, Phyllis "Bobo" Bryant, was their coach. They all kept convincing me to join the team, but I resisted because I felt I wasn't good enough. I finally gave in and joined a few weeks into the season. I remember running my first cross country race against Dededo Junior High. It was "just" a mile, but at 13 years old it felt much longer! I can't remember what place I came in or what my time was, but I stayed on the team even after going through an episode of hyperventilating and almost puking at the end! I finally saw my name printed in the results section of our newspaper the following year in the Pacific Daily News and thought it was so cool! I clipped it from the newspaper and still have it to this day! That season, we were now running 1.5-mile races.
I remember the camaradarie of being on a team. We would meet after school to train for our cross country meets, sometimes running to restaurants like Pizza Hut or to the beach, just to add variety to our program. We just ran. No formal speed workouts, distance runs, no core workout and surely we had no education in nutrition or hydration! Many of us also wore the wrong shoes! My first pair of "running shoes" were the pair of Adidias tennis shoes I wore daily to school! But it was still a lot of fun!
Always a Runner...
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