Beginning:
Sometime around the middle of May, Me, along with the other athletes on Marion Senior High school’s Track and field team who had advanced past districts, boarded the bus for an hour and a half long bus ride to Wise. This was the region’s meet for outdoor track. The meet that, if you succeed, lands you a spot at states. I was focusing on running the second leg for the 4×800 relay team, a team in which I made it states with the season previously. I had also planned to run the one mile race, my favorite and primary event of the season. However, I caught a virus the day before, and woke up the morning of the track meet feeling horrible.
Upon arriving in Wise, I had to instantly start warming up for the relay, it was the very first running event of the day. Me along with my distance team made our way towards the start, not expecting there to be an hour long delay. After stretching in the blistering heat for what seemed like eternity, we were called up to run. I took as much cold medicine as I possibly could hours before and was putting all my efforts into bringing this relay to states for the second time this year. We were seated fourth in the region and needed to finish within the top three to advance to states. Sure enough, we ran like we were being chased by a cheetah on cocaine. We finished first in the region. Little did I know, that would not be the most exciting event of the day. I went ahead and pulled out of my mile competition knowing my lungs would not be capable of running a state qualifying time.
Middle:
Now, with nothing left to do and a whole day ahead of me, I decided to explore. Earlier in the season, my first time running at Wise, I stumbled upon a huge junkyard while I was doing a warm up run. I realized with all this time on my hands, I should go back. I took three other adventurous teammates with me. We walked to the junkyard and looked around at the interesting cars that surrounded us. My courageous friend, Jim (fake name) wanted to look around the stacks of tires for a snack. My other teammates and I figured that was an idiotic idea so we kept moving forward. A little while later, I got a text from Jim stating that someone else was in the junkyard. I was a little concerned, but Jim’s smart. I knew he could hide long enough for the person to walk away. Sadly, I overestimated Jim’s brilliance. As it turns out, Jim decided to climb the tallest stack of tires to take a selfie. The man in the junkyard spotted him and started walking over to him. Jim quickly shot down into the stack of tires hoping the man in the junkyard would not find him. It was then that I got a text from Jim saying, “He saw me”. Then another message saying “help Alex”. My other two teammates and I were on the entirely other side of the junkyard. It was then that the old junkyard man climbed the stack of tires and peered in to see a scared Jim hiding at the bottom. The man told Jim to follow him. Jim was being led towards the man’s truck. Which happened to be blocking any of us from leaving. After a scary few minutes filled with panicked text messages, Jim told us to find a way out. He planned to turn around and bolt towards the entrance. My other friends and I crawled through at least 40 ft of prickly bushes and made our escape. Jim texted me to meet him by the trees at the front of the road that led up to the junkyard. We sprinted up towards the trees and sure enough, there was Jim. We then walked back to the track meet, all very shaken up by the experience. Once back to the track meet, we agreed not to mention what had happened and by no means go back to the junkyard.
End:
Later on, when I got home, I pulled up the junkyard on google maps. As it turns out, the junkyard was not Wise’s highschool property. It was a huge junkyard, a huge junkyard on private property. Long story short, qualifying for states in the 4×800 relay is not the only reason I remember that track meet.
Alex’s World 