Alex Cooper is a sophomore on the Emory & Henry College Men's Cross Country Team. He is studying at the University of Exeter during the spring of 2015. The following comes from his blog after the British Universities & Colleges Sport (BUCS) Cross Country Championships. Special thanks goes to Alex for sharing his study abroad experience with GoWasps.com.

EXETER, DEVON, ENGLAND - One piece of advice that I was given over and over again before going abroad was to find a group on campus to be a part of to help integrate myself into the university community. The unions here at Exeter are enormous and offer many options for societies and athletic clubs to join. There are traditional societies you would find in the United States relating to the arts, volunteering, academics, etc. Then you have off-the-wall societies like the Harry Potter Club and Hide-and-go-Seek Society. In looking for my first group to join, I had to look no farther than the running club that is comprised of cross country, track and field, and road racing. In Britain, they are all included under the umbrella of "Athletics." I detected the presence of the EU Athletic Club long before I got on campus or even had classes chosen or housing nailed down. I browsed around on the club's website and was impressed and decided I wanted to be a part of it. It's not an exotic choice for an athletic club like squash, rowing, or rugby, but I need to keep in shape while I'm here so that I may rejoin my team back in Emory ready to continue climbing the ODAC ladder. Plus, I figured that there may be an abundance of differences between British and American cross country; the name after all was different already. I've been running for 8 years now; it is time to see a different system of doing my sport. So I shot an email across the pond. At this point, I need to recognize Alex Warna, the club chairman, who received my email and responded thoroughly way back in May of 2014. He has helped me muddle through the technicalities of being a full member of the club since while answering all the little questions I've had about what I needed to do. My early contact with the team helped me to get excited about an aspect of my study abroad that I knew was set and I could be a part of. E&H Athletic Director Myra Sims gave me the okay, and I packed my spikes and running gear in with the rest of my life to go to the UK and run.

Upon my arrival, I've tried to jump right in and become acclimated with the people and the system. Not the easiest thing in the world to do, but my new teammates have been most welcoming and helpful. It has been a fun process to become integrated into the team. I've had too quickly get used to a system of very hard and fast workouts with little recovery on hard days, slow conversational runs on easy days, and new stretch routines where exercises that I've never seen before share names with ones I have performed for years. The track for doing the sessions is called the Exeter Arena, and it is a spectacular rubberized track. It is one of the few outdoor facilities that I have seen that is exclusively for track and field. Running around town has been nice on off days as well. We'll run through town down to the River Exe where we'll run along the bank where it's quite pleasant. We run at night, however, so translating what I see in the dark to my daytime internal map of the city is difficult. I also always have to make sure I look the correct way when crossing the street. I have picked up on a few cultural differences that I had hoped would exist in the running sphere as well. For instance, there are no workouts on the track; they are called 'sessions' instead. Spikes for cross country here are at least 1/2 in length (of course, they're measured in millimeters here) which is much longer than in the United States. There is good reason for this though. Very good reason.

I discovered this reason for myself when I traveled with the cross-country team to the British Universities & Colleges Sport (BUCS) Cross Country Championships in Brighton, England. Brighton is Sussex's beach town on the English Channel, and the race was hosted on the campus of the University of Sussex.

We traveled down by car. This was my first road trip in the UK. It was fun to ride on the left side of the road and see how traffic operated because of it. The biggest thing that struck me was that there is nothing really equivalent to the United States' interstate system. You'll be driving down the road going over 70mph, and suddenly the speed will decrease and there will be a roundabout blocking your way. Included in the fun ride was a surprise pass by Stonehenge. It very literally was on the side of the road in the middle of a field. Surprising that a world heritage site like that is so casually placed.

The team stayed in a youth hostel in downtown Brighton. It was a great location and a pretty nice place to sleep for the night. It was just a block away from the Channel; you could see the Brighton Pier from the window.

The race was on Saturday afternoon. It had been drizzling off and on for a bit more than a day, and it was cold: 35 degrees Fahrenheit. I was having constant flashbacks to the ODAC Championships I had raced in last November, but this was a far colder and muddier experience.

The men's A race was first, and 6 (not 7 as in the USA) runners per school took to the 12 kilometer course. Exeter's top 4 (again, not 5) runners totaled their place to give the team a score of 406 and a 20th place finish in the BUCS. Three girls scored for Exeter's women's team to give them a 10th place overall finish.

The men's B race was the last event of the day. The previous two races had sufficiently mucked up the course so much more than it had been before we arrived. The course was used the previous week for another cross-country meet, so by the time we got to it, it was a mud bath. I had to accept a fundamental difference between American and British cross country: Americans race to see who's the fastest. Brits race to see who's the toughest. Sure, American cross country is by no means easy. That would be ridiculous to suggest. However, the hosts of the NCAA XC Championships do not go out of their way to make sure the entire course is as muddy and hilly as possible. The race is also not held in the middle of January as the BUCS Championships are. Sussex University held a fantastic meet by UK standards: efficient and overly challenging. With the exception of the starting field that was about 200 meters long, the entire rest of the course was covered in mud up to at least the ankle. There is also a substantial hill in the middle of a loop that everyone runs twice. It was probably 800-1200 meters long. I've run some challenging courses, but this tops them off.

I warmed up as best I could, but the frigid air probably negated all 45 minutes I had just spent as soon as I took off my warm-ups. I stuffed my clothes in my bag, tossed it in the pile of stuff on the grass/mud that was the team camp (team tarps don't seem to be a thing here), and headed off with my teammates clad in our white vests (British word for "jersey") to don the line. We lined up in a strategic place and waited for the gun. Nearly a thousand men standing in a field in 2 degree Celsius temperature and overcast skies with only shorts, shoes, socks, and a singlet. I love my sport.

The official gave the starting commands in a British accent that reminded me that I was about to race in another country. I smiled at how cool the situation I was in was. That went away as the gun went off, and I tried to get out. Of my entire race, I'm probably proud of the way I started it the most. I used general cross-country strategy that I've learned and been taught for years to navigate the legions of runners through the first small bit of the race. I got the inside of the entire first turn but didn't get boxed in. I plowed up the first short yet steep hill as is my nature being from Southwest Virginia, and circled around the first small loop in a good position. The two long loops were all that remained. I was astounded with the mud that I kept plowing though; it just never ended! I got to the first hill with my spikes already covered and seemingly saturated with mud and got no respite from the gooey substance. My approach up the first long hill was fairly strong despite this, and I popped the top and rolled down in nose-over-toes fashion all the way back to the starting field. About this time, it began drizzling ever so slightly. I've been in some miserable conditions, but this was quickly turning into the worst of them all. I hit the flat section laden with mud, and that's when I began feeling it. It was at the natural point in an 8K when one begins to question why they're doing this to themselves, and the ground that wouldn't stay still under my feet and low temperature wasn't helping things. I did the best I could to plug on, all the while knowing I had the gigantic hill ahead.

Coming into the race, I was on a weird schedule. The NCAA race I last ran was in mid-November. As Emory & Henry has no indoor track, I began to recover for winter xc training. Then I had my wisdom teeth out coupled with Christmas and a trip to Atlanta that did not foster much time for training. I moved continents and showed up to a new team and jumped into track training that was much faster than anything I had done since my time on the Christiansburg High School track. My legs were very confused and out of sorts going into the race. The course, distance, and conditions were less than forgiving on this matter. I hit the second hill and felt like I was bobbing up and down instead of moving forward. It was the place to focus on, but it got me. By the time I crested it, I was so zapped I could not overcome the mud on the downhill as much as I would have liked. I recognized at this point that not only could I not feel or move my fingers, they were stuck together. In any event, gravity aided me back down to the lower field, and I finished on a (you guessed it) very muddy straightaway with a 31:05. This is the slowest 8K I've ever run and hardly compares to my 27:38 PR from the well-maintained course at Berry College in Georgia, but you know what? I'll take it. I was honestly happy with the effort I put forth. Of 95 teams, we came in 30th. I was pleased to contribute as I placed 3rd on the Exeter squad and contributed 133 points.

I've never wanted to be warm so badly. But we, the entire troop of 30+ EUAC runners, piled in the cars we came in and headed back to the hostel to freshen up. After a shower where I tried to get some mud off of my clothes as well as body, we got some dinner (I had an excellent calzone; it was spicier than ones I've had in America) and then got ready to go to the after party that the U of Sussex threw in downtown Brighton where a good time was had by all. We left the next morning. We casually passed by a few castles (no big deal) and The 'Henge once again en route back to Exeter. After a stop at my first UK Burger King, I arrived back at my flat, limped in my room, and took a glorious nap.

I'm pleased and proud to have put myself in a position to where I could race so early on in my time with EUAC and in such an important contest. I'm actively recovering from that endeavor to get ready for this week's challenge: another cross-country race! This one will be the longest I've ever run: 9.3 kilometers. It is sure to provide the same elemental challenges that I faced last week, but I will step to the line yet again wearing the third jersey I've ever worn. And just like the two before it, I'm proud to race in it and for what it stands for. #BleedGreen