The Dust Zombie Rises

Saturday, October 7th, there was a zombie in our midst. But first, some backstory:

Bright and early, I drove the kids 50 minutes down the road to the Max Jensen Richland Cross Country Invitational for another day at the races. This time, the 3 mile community race was the first race of the day. Jeff and I ran it and received yet another brutal reminder of the difficulties involved in hilly grassy running. Jeff still ran an impressive 16:10 for a second place overall finish, while my 22:49 earned me 4th female finisher. 

Up next was the kids' half mile race. Rose had fallen hard and scraped and bruised her hip and knee at recess the day before, so she decided she wasn't up for running a race. We gave her race number to Amber instead, and it was the cutest decision of all time. The giant paper race number engulfed nearly her entire torso, and she kept looking at it with a mixture of pride and uncertainty. Jay was all set to run the half mile too, so we lined up together at the start. Jay ran on ahead, and I held Amber's hand the whole 7 minutes and 7 seconds it took us to run the loop. She kept stopping and looking around, and I kept saying "ready...set...go!" to encourage her to start running again. After the first straightaway, Amber's high school cross country idol, Kaylee, joined us and held Amber's other hand, helping immensely with Amber's focus. Amber felt very special to be running with Kaylee.

We trotted around the big field, and I tried to get Amber to run to the finish without holding hands, because it was such a big finish area and she was so cute and small, but for that precise reason, she made sure to hold hands all the way through the line. She placed second to last. Not a bad showing for her cross country debut at age 2!

Jay, meanwhile, had run his fastest half mile ever, in 4:50. We were all very pleased, and I think Jay appreciated the opportunity to run a race without Rose blowing past him and beating him. He was all peppy and happy, waving his participant ribbon around happily before settling back down to play in the dust with his sisters.

The dust. There was this large swath of dirt that dry air and plenty of sunshine had turned to a fine soft powdery dust. Amber was drawn to it like a magnet, and Jay and Rose followed close behind. They spent hours playing in the luxurious dust, and Amber transformed into a Dust Zombie sometime after lunch. After the kids' race, we ran three errands, including a stop at Krispy Kreme for some donuts because it's October, and then returned to the cross country meet for some more cheering and dust-rolling and playing.

{reminder: click on the images to enlarge them and view as a slide show.}

Early morning dust digging

 J'adore.

Amber tried copying Jay's start line stance...

...now she's got it, hand on knee and everything. 

Oversized race number: check. Pink secondhand Nikes: check, check. 

 Post race spoils: ribbons, cups of water, and donuts with sprinkles!

 Dust angels...another step in her conversion to a full-on Dust Zombie.

 Every movement produced a cloud of dust, like Pigpen from Charlie Brown.

We tore ourselves away from the dust to go play on The Big Hill, which the 3 mile course went up twice. 

 I got a little emotional looking out at the cross country scene spread out below at the base of the hill. This is such a good honest sport. You run as fast as you can, and the results speak for themselves. I wrote an argumentative paper during college defending the claim that running is the only true sport because it is the original sport--sport in its purest form. My thesis was something like "strip away the balls, referees, helmets, and pads, and running is what's left--it's at the heart of all sports. Everything else is just a game." I still stand by that opinion. It reminds me of a cheeky t-shirt I saw at a meet once that said "date runners--the rest are just players." Exactly.  

 Team photo--well, as many team members as could be found at this moment.

"I make a rainbow." 

 I kept trying to get a picture of Amber's dusty lips, and she kept evading me. The white dust muting the red on her lips and cheeks completed her transformation into Dust Zombie.