Last weekend's intense overnight camping trip with the cross country team shoved me into tired recovery mode this week, but Random Responsible Things kept needing to be done. Even though my kids were in school all day every day, I didn't have a day to fully catch my breath until Friday! I had numbers to crunch and papers to sign after our team camping trip. I had uniform shorts orders to wrangle. I had dinners to cook and a family to keep on track. Rose and Amber started piano lessons this week. I traveled 18,000 steps on foot at least three days this week. I went and helped out at two back-to-back practices on Wednesday for the middle school and high school cross country teams, which involved lots of walking, kid-herding, timing, encouraging, and cone-placement/pickup. None of these activities was overly tiring alone, but combined together in the timeline of this week, they made me a nice a formidable schedule. Peripheral illustration of my general fatigue and busy-ness: On Monday (Labor Day), while our family was watching a show together, one of the kids spilled a bowl of popcorn onto the carpet. I did not get around to vacuuming up the scattered white bits until Thursday.
Part of my tiredness was self-inflicted. I am still determined to do as many of the cross country workouts as possible in order to make an attempt at a 5k PR before this year is out. So I did two speed workouts this week which drained me to the point of needing extra snacks and meals to survive. My metabolism is bound to slow down at some point, right? Since us coaches don't do the workouts with the team on workout days, I did the workouts on my own before practice, which added to the large amount of time that I spent in running clothes doing running things this week.
Jay, Rose, and Amber were rather tired this week too. Their odd brand of semi-casual, semi-serious, sometimes-intellectual bickering was either more frequent this week or Jeff and I were less tolerant of it in our own tiredness. Or both. Jeff started having the kids say one thing they love about each other whenever they fought. It was hilarious to see their reluctance and excellent to see how well it worked. Then at dinner one night, when nobody was even arguing, Jeff went around the table and had us take turns saying one thing we love about each family member, including ourselves. It was a nice way to eat dinner together and have positive happy feelings in our home.
The wildfire smoke was thick enough for us to hold indoor cross country practices two days this week. After a very rainy Friday, however, the air was crisp and clear for our cross country meet on Saturday. We traveled just under an hour to the First Annual Chiawana Invitational in Pasco. Wake up time: 5am. School Bus departure: 6:30am. Time we got home: 2:45pm.
This meet was Jay's first cross country race as a member of the middle school team. We have entered him in plenty of races over the years, but this was his first run in a school uniform with a team. He even wore racing spikes! He admitted to being nervous, but he ran well, finishing 6th on his team with a 2 mile time of 15:55. It was extra fun watching my own son in a race.
Amber and Rose brought a frisbee, a hula hoop, and a jump rope to play with during the cross country meet, and they had a very active busy time there while Jeff and I did our coaching thing, sprinting around the fields to watch and encourage our runners in their races. I recorded all of my coach-running with my Garmin watch, and it totaled out to 4.6 miles of dashing around during four races! Even though we didn't travel far or stay overnight, I was still plenty worn out by Saturday afternoon.
Weekly photo album:
Amber was very proud of this block castle she built.
I tried out a meal prep delivery service for the first time this week. The company is Hungryroot, and they have lots of wholesome healthy ingredients. You get to choose which recipes you want to make and they mail you the ingredients and recipes each week. It's nice but their largest serving size is four, and too often "healthy" equates to low calorie, so I'm not sure if we'll stick with this plan, but it was nice to have different foods than usual this week.
A close-up on some of the fun foods from our delivery.
Central Park of Sunnyside: where we do most of our cross country workouts. The perimeter in the grass there is close to half a mile, and our runners circle it over and over at various speeds. I loved how the sun was streaming through the big old trees while we were there on Wednesday afternoon.
Amber wanted to watch a show, but I convinced her to snuggle with me instead. She is solid, and my lap was aching after just a few minutes!
Amber requested a braid for school one day, and I was shocked that I managed it in her unruly curls.
She felt pretty.
Meanwhile, cute intense Rose braided her own hair one morning, and felt very accomplished. She gushed, "I feel like I can do anything!" Who knew hair autonomy was so invigorating?
Smoky gunky air near our house. Normally we can see brown hills on the horizon.
Our first Hungryroot meal was quite beautiful, even if the included one pound of chicken felt like slim pickings for our family.
Jay, screwing the spikes into his racing shoes in preparation for his first team cross country race.
School buses can't possibly be designed for highway travel. I sat by the window and watched the stop sign on our bus flap and wobble in the slipstream. The bus was cramped, bouncy, and rattly and it's amazing we can survive without a team chiropractor on staff.
Morning faces on the bus to the meet. They seriously just sat there all hunkered down in their jackets for the entire hour-long bus ride. No movies, no talking, just sitting and staring.
Jeff, conferring with the middle school's Coach Winger en route to the meet.
We set up our team tents on the turf infield of the Chiawana High School track.
The race starting line was on the track. As one of the tall kids, Jay had to take a bigger jersey. We gave the middle schoolers the old high school uniforms this year because our middle school team is made up of two middle schools, with different school mascots and colors. It gets confusing having two uniforms on one team! So these youngsters got the high school uniforms of yore and some fit better than others.
Good meet moment #1: watching Jay race.
Jay's finish! I ran 1.5 miles while watching Jay's 2 mile race.
Good meet moment #2: watching Hector (a senior) use knowledge from his sports medicine class to help sore teammates.
Good meet moment #3: Jeff jumping in and helping the JV boys shout the team cheer nice and LOUD.
Good meet moment #4: After our girls team captain (Jenny) finished her race, she went back out on the course and cheered on her final two teammates all the way to the finish. Team spirit and camaraderie is at an all-time high.
Good meet moment #5: We had the highest number of guys ever to wear their team-issued short running shorts with pride. This is a picture of Jeff with all of the seniors on the team. Only three weeks into the season and I'm already thinking about how much we're going to miss this group next year.
Rose and Amber were tired on the way home from the meet. Somehow they agreed to lay in their bus bench in a heap?
Eventually Rose took Amber's jacket and Amber retreated like a turtle into her t-shirt. I loved how her hair and boots refused to be contained, even in a turtle t-shirt move.
When we were resting at home after the meet on Saturday, Amber snuggled right up to Jeff and watched the first ten minutes of a show like this. I joked that she was stealing my spot!
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