What Does Experience Mean at NXN?

It takes some composure to stick to your plan when you're running shoulder-to-shoulder with the crowd over the whoop-de-doos. Photo by Alan Versaw.

It would not be fair to say a team making its first NXN experience can't be expected to do well. But there are a number of things to adjust to in a short time frame, and familiarity with the NXN experience is undoubtedly a beneficial thing. And, unlike state meets all across the country, you're unlikely to find any teams "happy just to be there" in Portland. So, what difference does experience make?

Does experience help you to know what to do with the monster-sized chocolate chip cookies in the sack lunches?

How do you prepare your team for do-this-here, do-that-there schedules of the days leading to the main event? And when do you have kids roll out to eat breakfast? With so much packed into the days and the air so full of anticipation, how do you help get kids into a frame of mind where they can actually sleep? Girls, I think, have an advantage here--it seems most girls adapt better to sleeping two to a queen bed than guys do. It's enough, however, for me just to speculate on this; I'm definitely not soliciting a pile of anecdotal evidence to support or debunk my theory.

In any case, woe the to room with an industrial strength snorer. It seems almost every team has at least one.

All these questions, and more, present management challenges for the teams, and individuals, competing at NXN.

Of this year's boys field, seven of the 22 teams were at NXN last year. But, even among those seven teams, the turnover ratio of team members last year to this was pretty high.

Counting team members who were in Portland as the "8th man," only ABQ XC, Cedar Park, Manlius, and Woodlands bring back as many as four of the individuals who were present at last year's event.

The Woodlands brought along several additional runners to compete in last year's open race. While those competitors were not part of the whole NXN experience, they doubtlessly come to this year's event a little more savvy than most newcomers.

Elmhurst represents the low end of things with only two of this year's seven having been along for the trip last year. Even two, however, can be a significant resource to help new team members navigate the waters and maintain some semblance of focus on the reason why they're there in the first place.

The picture is a little different on the girls side of things.

Nine of the 22 qualifying girls teams were present at NXN last year, and two more teams bring considerable NXN experience to Portland.

While Clifton Park and Des Moines were not present as teams at NXN last year, Lizzie Predmore and Anika Simonson ran as individuals for Clifton Park. Ashlie Decker of Des Moines ran as an individual last year, plus she was joined by this year's teammates Katie Flood and Heather Tobias as members of the 2007 Des Moines team at NTN.

Unless I've misapplied some names, Rocky River takes the prize for returning all seven of this year's team members from last year. Kinetic returns six, while most of the rest return either four or five, counting those who were along as the 8th team members.

The Portland team makes the shortest trip of all, but, other than dodging the ordeal of sitting in an airplane seat for multiple hours before checking in at the hotel, I'm doubtful the hometown advantage amounts to much. Undoubtedly, Portland will have the most fans lining the course on Saturday, but in a race like this, fans are just so much background noise.

My team members from last year reported to me that the the din of the crowd was pretty much indecipherable throughout the entire race. There were too many people too close and too much going on in the race itself to pick out supportive voices from the cacophony of whistling, yelling, and cowbells. If you give attention to the crowd, you're probably not giving enough attention to the race. They were glad for familiar faces after the race, but those familiar faces were irrelevant during the race.

And speaking of the actual race, the course itself takes a little getting used to.

This is perhaps most true for teams that do not typically run in spikes. There really is no other alternative at Portland Meadows unless the ground is frozen (which looks pretty unlikely for this year). Another big question about the course concerns how to handle the irregularities, the whoop-de-doos, the hay bales, and the the little step-down on the far side. How do you negotiate the turns that seem to get wetter as the day goes on* and have been many times turned over by the spikes of runners preceding you on the course?

NXN is a race, but it is much more than just a race. Those who handle the entire complex of events well will tend to handle the race well.

* - Actually, the turns, and other parts of the course as well, probably do get wetter as the day goes on--even on a sunny day. The multiplied pounding of feet tends to squeeze water out of the soil and bring it to the surface where it pools and, generally speaking, makes things slicker.