I've mentioned before that I suck at ball sports, but I did run cross country and track all four years in high school. Of the two, cross country was a lot more fun. Each race began with a mass start, then the racers would funnel into a dirt trail through New England forest. I wasn't very good, but I could just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Both the boy's team and the girl's team had some very fast runners. A few of my team mates were top runners in the state. All I had to do was cross the finish line, and they would qualify for the podium. This arrangement led me to develop a whole new racing tactic...The Decoy. An underclassman named Joey MacRitchie and I would toe the line with all the best runners other schools had to offer. Everyone would put on their game face. A starter gun would go off and the group would lunge forward. That's when Joey and I would jump into action. We would explode into the 3.1 mile course at a pace that was barely