September's end

Well September sure sped by! Here are pictures from the last week of September. I may add more words to this post later, but I really wanted its publishing date to be in September so I'm posting it unfinished at the very end of the very last day of the month. September was so busy!

Balloons at sunrise

On Friday morning, it took me nearly 20 minutes to peel myself out of bed. "What is happening today?" I asked myself groggily as I checked my calendar. The only thing on the Friday square besides preschool and xc practice was the Prosser Balloon Rally. "Rats!" I thought to myself. It's already 6:30am and we probably missed it. Quickly I checked the balloon rally's Facebook page. They were still in a pilot's meeting! Hope was restored! I weighed options back and forth for a few minutes, then committed. I gave Jay and Rose the option to stay home and practice piano or hurry up, get ready, and go to see if the balloons would launch. They have hardly ever gotten ready so fast.

Blog blender

Another week has flown past, leaving me limp, wimpy, and exhausted in its wake. It seems like cross country season is slowly chopping away at my (admittedly small) tree of reserved energy, leaving a shorter stump every week. Yet I still like it! Jeff and I are exhausted but we are still doing more for the team than we are required to do. We care about these big kids too much not to "go the extra mile." We are worn out yet excited about our runners' progress. Our bodies are stiff and beaten after logging a shocking cumulative 17 hours crammed into tiny school bus benches over the past 8 days. But our spirits are somehow high! Jeff has been running regularly for the past two weeks (his ribs are finally allowing real running again) so his mental health is solid, even if his trick knee is aching. I am slowly coming around to the understanding that even though I can't talk loudly and herds of teenagers terrify me, I am still a valuable contributor to our dynamic coaching duo. There is more than one way to lead. Even though most people lead with vocal volume and big-group charisma, I can still be an effective leader with my quiet voice and individual connections. I'm not always sure how to be a quiet coach, but I am learning.

Stretch week

This week stretched me in all kinds of ways. Saying "I'm tired" seems redundant because when is a parent/responsible adult not tired? But my tiredness is the starting point for this post. I started trying to do separate posts with my thoughts about cross country this week as well as our family's weekly comings and goings, but everything is so tangled together that my tired brain can't seem to unravel cross country from my family. What it comes down to is that the cross country team becomes part of my family for two and a half months each year, taking up large quantities of time and energy, both mental and emotional. Hence the difficulty in separating the two--it's too tiring! My thoughts on both of them are all so interrelated that I am just going to have to resort to dumping it all together into the ole blog-blender, flip the switch, and see what happens.

Ultimook 2019

This weekend was our first cross country meet of the season! We like to start big, so we signed the team (and ourselves) up for the Ultimook Cross Country Challenge in Tillamook, Oregon for the second year in a row. Since all high school athletes have to attend ten practices before competing, we only took 16 out of our 56 total runners to this meet. As much as we'd like all of our runners to have this rugged cross country experience and team-building opportunity, Jeff and I were fine with having a bit less crowd control to do at our first meet of the season. It all began on Friday, September 6th. Jeff and I spent the morning making preparations: packing our gear, collecting meal money from the school district, purchasing PBJ supplies, and assembling the team gear. Jay and Rose went to school for one hour, and I picked them up at 10am. At 10:20am, the school bus pulled into the high school and we all loaded its belly to the brim with tents, coolers, bags, and bins. After a final roll call, the bus rolled out at 10:40am. Tillamook, here we come!

First days

Jeff is the head coach, I am his assistant, and it has begun: the first day of high school cross country practice was Monday, August 26th. This is Jeff's third season as head coach, and my second season as his assistant. Compared to last year, we had TRIPLE the runners show up at practice on day one. TRIPLE. Our team roster kept growing all week until it reached 50. Fifty runners, and only a dozen of them are girls. Thank goodness for Jeff's excellent classroom management skills and strong loud voice! I spent much of the week feeling rather inadequate to the challenge of such a large team. Coaching running is a tricky blend of patience, teaching, and humor. I have had a few moments where it felt like I was doing things right and helping people in the best way, so it's not all anxiety! My feeling of inadequacy hasn't completely left, but I gave myself a pep talk and reminded myself that I am doing my best and Jeff is doing his best and together we will make this work! It helps immensely that the runners who joined the team this year are quality humans and the overall team spirit has been so happy and positive, even on the 95 degree blazing sunny afternoon runs we've gone on. So in spite of my personal qualms and inadequacies, I really enjoyed the first week of the cross country season.