Beginning Again

Coaching a high school sport is kind of like caring for a newborn baby. It's always on my mind, and it seems like all I talk about, to the point of mental fatigue and boredom. Even when I'm actively trying NOT to talk about it, my brain is thinking about it in the background. When is the next practice? What are we doing at practice? Will I run with the team or stand on the sidelines? How much should I push the runners when they're tired? What if someone gets injured? What's the weather forecast for 3pm? What number of layers is sufficient for that temperature and wind combo? What if I freeze? It's an endless cycle, and cross country has been pretty much endless this 2020-2021 schoolyear. Endless, but full of beginnings:

• At the end of October we were cleared to begin off-season practices.
• In early December we had to begin wearing masks while running at practice.
• In early February, we were allowed to begin taking our masks off while running again!
• The start date of our delayed, shortened season changed several times until it landed on February 22nd, 2021. 

Once the official start date was set, we finally had an end date--an actual time frame! What luxury! Our season will run for five and a half weeks, from February 22nd to April 1st, 2021. We were holding practices five days per week for nearly two months before the official start to our season, and rotating through 3 practices per week for two months before that. What is normally a ten week season in the fall began in the last week of October 2020 and will continue all the way to April 1st, 2021. That's twice as long as the usual season! Even though we weren't "officially in season" during most of that time, we were still coaching and practicing. 

Jeff thrives on holding practice every day. He has a massive spreadsheet with itemized workouts all the way through cross country season to the end of track season. Jeff is a professional teenager wrangler, so it's second nature to him to spend an extra 90 minutes with teenagers at the end of his high school teacher day. I have drastically less experience, finesse, and comfort in the teenage arena, so coaching can become a barrier in my brain. It's a strange phenomenon, because I LIKE being an assistant coach. I like the kids, I like running, and I like watching the kids improve. It is simply difficult to be pulled between two responsibilities--my coaching job and my mom-job. 

Jay, Rose, and Amber are old enough not to need excessive intervention to stay alive. They can stay home without me quite safely. But warring responsibilities still yank on my psyche in a myriad of ways: mom guilt, coaching inadequacies, that feeling of barely squeaking by in both areas, wanting to maintain my own exercise outside of cross country, still needing alone time but having less time for it because I already leave the kids for 90+ minutes per day after school, and what about dinner? Sigh. Somehow it all works. Having an end date helps immensely. I can handle this crazy for another month.

Did that sound negative? I hope it didn't sound negative, or too confusing. I was just trying to explain the tangle of thoughts and feelings around coaching lately. Since cross country season is my newborn baby, that's all I really have to share for this week.

Here is a photo album from our week:

Rose has been reading, reading, reading a Brandon Sanderson series. We have the first three books on kindle e-book, but the fourth book is in paper form. It is 1200 pages. Seeing Rose pore over a dictionary-sized book makes me smile.

View from a run. I often run before cross country practice because I selfishly want to run MY pace.

Another reason to run before practice this week was the high winds that picked up over the course of the day. I ran in the much-calmer mornings.

Sunshine on my shoulder makes me happy, especially after standing in the biting steady strong wind for 90 minutes at practice.

Amber's kindergarten teacher gave her rainbow smiley faces on her worksheets this week.

Reading/browsing pictures.

Amber celebrated the 100th day of school this week! They had to celebrate on day 97 or something because only half of the kids are in class in person at a time.

Picture from a bike ride: Mt. Adams popped onto the horizon several times.

A massive phalanx of apple boxes.

I found a new section of orchard roads open this week, and the apple box towers were large.

Apple box canyon! I rode my bike through it.

On the upper north side of the orchards, I came across melting slushy snow drifts. I couldn't ride through them. My bike sunk to the axel and spun out when I tried. So I walked, slipping and sliding through the sloppy snow, nearly a mile down what is usually a glorious mostly-downhill glide.

These three buddies crafted an elaborate dungeons and dragons game this week. 

High winds wreaked havoc on Rose's self-braided hair.

Sisters, swinging at the miniature park around the corner from piano lessons.

On Thursday, the winds were too high (25 mph sustained wind with 40mph gusts) so we had cross country practice inside the high school (indoor running requires masks). It was the first time many of the kids had been inside the high school in nearly a year. I try not to post too many pictures of other people's kids online, but they're wearing masks, and I know all of their parents, so it's ok, right?

Rose made cookies one afternoon and they were SO GOOD!

Saturday (yesterday) we had our first cross country meet. Actually, it was a team time trial that we treated like a meet so we could train our parent volunteers on how to help out. It went well and took far less time than I was expecting it to. (we were at the high school for a mere four hours!)

Jay ran the two mile time trial. It ended up being 2.3 miles, and he finished in 20:51. Not too shabby for a sixth grader! 

Our tiny sweet girls team of beginners, ready to run! We have only two girls who have run before. The rest we begged to join so we'd have a full team, bless their hearts. 

A covid-era coach story: lots of the boys have grown out their black hair into shoulder length waves, because what else are they supposed to do during a pandemic? Haha. They actually have some really beautiful hair. The long-haired boys wear knit hats pulled low and masks pulled high and their hair looks very similar. We had at least three kids with wavy long black hair before this week. Then another guy showed up, with more long wavy black hair almost identical to the other guys. It took me a minute to realize that the new guy was not one of our regulars. But Jeff seemed to know him, which happens often since Jeff works at the high school and recruits kids for xc all the time. 

Jeff couldn't find the new guy's name on our list, and after some confusion, Jeff asked him "remind me what your last name is?" Jeff thought he was someone else entirely! All of a sudden, I realized who this new guy was, and he wasn't new to the team at all. Jeff realized it too, and both of our jaws dropped. We have coached him for two years! This formerly slim short kid has grown several inches and muscled up significantly since we last saw him 15 months ago in fall of 2019. It was a hilarious misunderstanding because his newfound height combined with the muscle and the extra long hair and a face mask totally disguised him. Made me feel pretty good about all of the masked kids we do recognize regularly!