The 2023 Senior Perspectives is the 18th in a series of annual collections. Senior captains and representatives of teams at Harvard have been invited to contribute viewpoints based on personal experience from both their senior seasons and full varsity careers at Harvard.
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Hometown: Portland, Ore.
Sport: Women's Cross Country/Track and Field
Concentration: Integrative Biology
House: Leverett
At the beginning of the end-of-the-world week in the spring of 2020, my teammate Gillian told me, "I feel so insignificant," as we ran together for the last time around one of our favorite loops, Fresh Pond. She was referring to the fact that we had just found out our spring track season had been canceled and that we all had to head home to take the rest of our classes online, and her senior spring was gone, just like that. Amidst the stress of midterms or finals, practice was something that could be relied upon – you showed up every day and got results via this consistent training. It was extremely disorienting for all of us on the team when this suddenly disappeared.
I have not had an easy 4-5 years here, with extraordinary highs and devastating crashes. Like clockwork, I received a stress reaction every cross-country season in mid-October beginning my freshman year until I finally broke the curse my senior fall. When this happened though, it was magic. I had a breakthrough senior cross season where things finally clicked, our team was in sync, and racing became so much fun. I carried the momentum into a solid indoor season with a few big PRs, up until my foot started to hurt two weeks before Heps. I discovered I had a fairly severe stress reaction/borderline fracture in my left foot. I was crushed, especially since I thought that Coach Gibby and I had cracked the code. I felt like I had done everything right, but my worst fear had still happened. I probably cried for a week. The injury meant I couldn't run for nearly two months, which meant I missed the bulk of my outdoor season, but I trained hard and stayed focused on my goals, even when they looked less and less probable. Despite this, my track season this year has been a bit of a fairytale – I raced one small meet to show I could race off less than a month of running, tried out the 5k for the first time at Heps and managed to score, then ran it again a week later to qualify for regionals for the first time.
Through all these personal triumphs and setbacks, my team has been with me. I feel extraordinarily lucky to have the experience of running alongside the impressive women on this team. Helping each other push our limits every day in practice then watch the payoffs in races is so rewarding – seeing Issy smash her PR in the 3k steeple at William & Mary as a freshman, getting to share in the excitement of watching Maia and the men's team race XC nationals last season even when we didn't qualify, cheering on Judy to a school record, to name just a few special moments. The shared wins are the most exhilarating – a highlight would have to be earning the triple crown this year, which happened narrowly in cross country and ended in a champagne celebration this track season alongside men's track. Regionals in 2019 was also crazy – at the last minute, the course changed from cross country to a road race since it was nearly winter in Buffalo, N.Y., and the course was frozen and snowy, and Coach Saretsky managed to get us all Vaporflys by driving around to different running stores. I'm lucky to come away with lifelong friendships and deep relationships with many of my teammates, and an amazing relationship with Coach Gibby, who has guided me through all of this with a great sense of humor.
There are so many more stories I could tell, but I'll leave it here. While seasons are temporary, and they can end prematurely without warning due to injury or a global pandemic, the fleeting nature of this sport makes the rewards even more special. My time on the Harvard track and field and cross-country team has taught me that every stride is a gift. It can go away in an instant, and the sport will sometimes break your heart. At the same time, the successes are ecstasy because they are generated by suffering and grit. Running is a sport of extremes, and it has been such a joy to run for this team.
