More on Pack Running

I thought I'd add a bit to my column on Shiprock's propensity to race in a pack.

I asked Robert Bedsole to comment on the subject.

Bedsole, my teammate at Hoover High School, was a 10-time state champion, won the Great American Cross Country Meet in 2004 and qualified for the Footlocker National Championship. He also ran at N.C. State and competed well in the ACC in between incessant stress fractures.

Here are Bedsole's thoughts on pack racing:

"Running may be an individual sport, but there's certainly an advantage to having teammates around you in a race. On the one hand, you know what your teammates are capable of, so you can work off of each other to set a good pace for the group. I've also noticed that racing next to my own teammates helps me to relax in a race. And if I'm having a bad day, and my teammates are right there with me, I feel a little more motivated to suck it up and run through the pain with that audience of close friends nearby.

"But on the other hand, when you're getting closer to the finish, there's extra incentive to beating your own teammates instead of someone you don't even know from another team. Any way you look at it, pack running makes everybody faster."

Stay true and keep pounding,
Christopher