Track and Cold

March blew in on a strong cold wind this week. The first day of high school track practice was on Monday. As planned, I helped out at high school track practice every day this week. It was exhausting, both physically and mentally! Seeing 100 new teenage faces each afternoon caused my brain to freeze up with information overload, so I could only manage to learn and remember one new name per day. And then there was the weather. It was in the low 40s, calm, and partly sunny for the first two days, but I did not dress in enough layers. After practice on Monday I was nearly certain that I'd never feel warm again. I dug deep into my wardrobe after that pre-hypothermic experience and wore thick merino leggings underneath fleece lined wind pants, with a wool shirt, a merino-lined windbreaker, and a down coat on top and thick gloves plus a hat to track practice for the rest of the week. Track coaches have very few opportunities to run with the team (to generate body heat), and as my friend sagely commented, "it's pretty much impossible to wear enough layers to stay warm while standing around out in the cold." After this week, I concur with this statement 100%.

Thursday and Friday we had afternoon sustained winds of 20mph, which added a whole new layer of physical endurance to my high school track coaching experience. On Thursday someone applied to the position for 6th high school assistant track coach. He was interviewed and hired on Friday, and his first day is on Monday. Suddenly my three weeks of promised substitute assistant coaching ended two weeks early. I learned a lot from my week with the high school track team, and I even started getting attached to way more of the kids than I expected to. But it will be a good thing for me to be present for my own three kids at home after school for two more weeks before I jump into the deep end of my first-ever season as a head coach.

At high school track practice each day, I worked with Jeff, sorting the group of 60+ beginners into event groups. The way we did this monumental task was to watch them run a little, then rotate them through a practice with a different event coach each day. Monday was hurdles. I learned SO MUCH from watching and listening to the hurdles coach! My brain was spinning and I couldn't sleep that night. After that I started taking notes on what each event coach did to introduce a new skill to beginners. It felt like cheating, seeing how to do my job and recording it! But it was excellent research. 

On Wednesday, I helped time for the distance kids' workout while craning my neck and ears to continue listening in on the beginners' introduction to high jump. It involved a lot of head-whipping back and forth between the 400s workout on the track and the long jump workout on the infield, with lots of feverish thumb-typing notes into my phone. 

The funniest day was on Thursday, when Jeff and I had to teach the beginners how to throw a javelin. The throws coach was busy with 20+ other kids, so it was up to us to teach the beginners the javelin. We are not throwers, and I'm not sure I had ever even held a javelin before Friday. But Jeff watched a YouTube video and I took a javelin coaching class at the coaching conference a few weeks ago, so with our combined knowledge we cobbled together a beginner javelin lesson, admitting at the beginning, middle, and end that we didn't know much and they should defer to the throws coach in the future.

A surprising thing happened as I was walking over to the group of 70+ assembled high school track runners on Wednesday. I was the first coach to arrive, and normally being the only coach present makes me super nervous. As I walked toward the group of teenagers on Wednesday, though, I suddenly realized that I wasn't scared of them! I searched my worry-prone stomach but felt none of the clenching twisting anxiety that normally grips me when I'm faced with a group of teenagers. Instead I felt a maternal fondness for them. It felt like a big moment. I did feel that comfortable with our cross country team in the fall, but that was a group of 35 kids--a third the size of the track team. It felt good to feel good about being there. My journey through coaching teenagers has been a massive growing experience for me, and I'm definitely not through with those growing pains yet. But I'm not scared anymore!

I feel like Kevin on Home Alone, opening the front door after the thieves left and shouting "Hey! Do you hear me? I'm not afraid anymore!"

Will that fear swoop back in before my first practice as middle school head coach? Probably. Will it try to sneak in every chance it gets? Most likely. For now, I am harnessing the confidence from that moment on Wednesday afternoon and holding onto it. I am still a bit anxious about the first day and first week of middle school track season, because it will be the time to set expectations and develop routines, and I hope I have mapped out the best ways to get all of those balls rolling the way I want them to. But So far I don't feel scared of the actual kids, which seems like a giant step in the right direction. Haha, I know--took you long enough, Shaina!

This week I learned that there were two viable applicants for the position of middle school assistant track coaches, which eased my mind greatly in regards to that upcoming responsibility. My mind is much calmer now with all of these resolutions to my track and field coaching conundrums.  

Parent-coach logistics: on Tuesday and Thursday, I arrived at the track an hour before high school practice started, to conduct a middle school conditioning workout for Jay's group of faithful distance runners. We finished the workout by 3:15, when I drove Jay and Rose home and then drove straight back to the school for high school track practice at 3:30. Those two days were extra busy. Monday was crazy because right after track practice ended, I had to pick Amber up from home and drive her to piano lessons. Wednesday was the calmest day driving-wise, because I drove Jay and Rose home from school and had plenty of time to return for high school track practice since it starts later on Wednesdays. I just had to leave practice early on Wednesday to get dinner in my kids and drive kids to church activities. And I had a Relief Society presidency meeting during the Wednesday night activity. I was BEAT when I finally got home, still in my 15 track practice layers, at 8:30pm Wednesday night. SO much driving back and forth between school and home after 2pm.

Does this post seem track-and-field-coaching heavy? Get used to it! Track takes over our family's existence in March, April, and May every year so buckle up, buttercup!

I was so tired and busy this week that I only snagged a small handful of pictures:

Amber is looking so old these days!

My favorite part about helping with the high school track team this week was watching Jeff in his element. He is like a horse whisperer but with teenagers...a teenager-whisperer? That doesn't have the same ring to it. I snapped this picture on the sly during the team gathering at track practice one day. Jeff is in the middle of the large blob of teenagers, explaining rules to them, making them laugh, holding them accountable, and gaining their trust all at the same time. Every single day at track practice this week I had this strong feeling of how important and GOOD and RIGHT this job is for Jeff.

My artwork on Tuesday reflected my cold cold track practice experience.

Amber on her school's crazy hair day: she asked if she could wear her hair down that day and I agreed because her hair is honestly at its craziest when it is wild, free, and untamed by scrunchies or braids.

The least glamorous part of my week: mixing up a double batch of meatloaf patties before lunchtime so they could be cooked and kept warm for us to eat after track practice later.

I peeled my baby orange in one perfect S-shaped peel for the first time ever on Wednesday!

Rose was trying to get extra vitamins from her spinach.

Rose stayed home sick with a cough and cold on Sunday and Monday this week, but never fully rested up enough and ended up falling asleep when she went to her room to get dressed for school on Friday. So she stayed home on Friday. Jay came down with my cold and stayed home from school on Thursday and Friday. Thankfully after a slow relaxing Saturday, they were both ready to enter the land of the living again for church on Sunday.

It was different having just my two big kids home sick. They were so low maintenance, lying on the couch watching Duck Tales cartoons and superhero movies that I barely knew they were there.

On Saturday for high school track practice, Jeff ran an inter-squad practice meet. There was just one or two heats of each running event, plus the field events, and only our team came. Jeff used this time to practice setting up and running the complicated two-camera timing system. Jeff spent most of the time up in the press box (this year they gave him a cable connection so he can operate the finish line cameras from the press box). I was Clipboard Lady assisting the starter on the track. My job was to check in each kid for their track event and give them their lane assignments. It was pretty fun! I took this picture when I brought Jeff the last few heat sheets at the end of the 2 hour meet. The view from the press box was awesome! I want to watch a track meet from there someday.