Ultimook 2025!

We survived our 7th Ultimook cross country meet! This trip pushes the limits of our endurance every single year: hours riding a school bus, sleep deprivation, heavy lifting, organizing, accounting skills, running, emotional support, inclement weather, mud, etc. 

Cross country is brutal!

Before all of that fun, we had four days in Sunnyside. On Labor Day we had xc practice in the morning. I went to physical therapy in the afternoon for help with my ankle tendons. That PT session enabled me to run for the first time in 2 weeks! I only ran twice in August, so it felt like my first run in a month. I had to do nearly half an hour of tendon mobility, strength, and drills to get ready to run, but I ran 3 whole miles and it didn't cripple me! My return to running is going to be annoyingly gradual. 

Tuesday was the first day of early morning seminary for Jay and Rose--Rose's first day of seminary ever! Tuesday was also the hottest day of XC practice possible (it was 99 degrees--the hottest it can be before we have to practice indoors). Even though it was hot, we broke our previous high school cross country practice attendance record (49), with 51 kids at practice in the heat. Even better: nobody got heat exhaustion! (Although we were all exceedingly thirsty afterwards, in spite of taking water breaks every 10 minutes during practice.)

On Wednesday, wildfire smoke started drifting in, and on Thursday we had indoor xc practice thanks to the ongoing heat advisory and wildfire smoke. Thursday we also broke our XC practice attendance record again: 54 high schoolers came to practice! The school district has posted the job opening for another assistant cross country coach. Maybe someone will apply? We practiced inside with the middle school team on Wednesday, so 54 high schoolers plus 20 middle schoolers made a MASSIVE cross country practice in the high school wrestling room. 

Thursday was a go-go-go day for me, getting everything ready for the overnight Ultimook cross country meet. The school district only allows us to take 30 kids on an overnight trip, so we had to keep track of who attended the most practices and then prioritize seniors and freshmen after that. Even with all of those filters, two kids were eligible but didn't get to come because of the 30-kid limit. Again, this is the biggest cross country team we've ever had! My least favorite task in preparation for Ultimook is cashing the checks from the school fiscal office. I have to ask the bank to divide the kids' meal money equally between 30 envelopes. This year that turned out to be $61.30 per envelope. It was easier to ask for that 30 cents 30 times than to figure out how to account for that extra $9 another way. Thankfully the lady at the bank did not give me the evil eye when I asked for the money to be divided that way. In the past, the bank has been pretty grumpy about this. 

Sadly, while the school district increased the amount of food money that kids get per meal per day on overnight trips, the coaches' per diem allotment was removed. So a work trip without any reimbursements. Cool. Budget cuts are the worst. It just felt extra rude because as coaches, we always make sure every kid has money to eat, which involves using our own money. Receiving zero money from the school for our own food just made me feel like the school didn't value us or anything we have been doing. Sigh. Enough about that.

Here's the list of our pre-Ultimook Festivities on Friday:

• 8:30am Friday morning: school bus leaves the high school.
• Picnic lunch packed by the school cafeteria.
• 3pm: team beach run and frolic along the Oregon coast!
• 5pm-ish: dinner and ice cream at the Tillamook Creamery.
• 6:30pm-ish: arrive at Hydrangea Ranch and set up tents.

Saturday, September 6th Ultimook cross country meet:

• 8:15am: Jeff and I ran the 3 mile community race on the course.
• 9am: Amber ran the middle school girls' 3k race.
• 10am-12:30pm: JV and Varsity races! Rose and Jay both raced on our varsity teams!
• 1pm-2:45pm: pack up and lug gear out to bus pick-up spot
• 3pm: load bus and leave.
• 5-6pm: dinner stop at Five Guys.
• 10:30pm: arrive back at the high school and unload.
• 11pm: arrive HOME to shower and sleep sleep sleep. But first, lay out the wet tent and sleeping bags to air.

Anecdotes from the weekend:

In order to keep a romance on our team G rated, we had all of the boys sleep in one mega tent, made up of our four team canopy tents pushed together into a giant square, with the canopy walls all velcro'd into place. That would have worked great every other year we've gone to this meet, but this year around midnight, it started to pour rain, accompanied by lightning and thunder. The four canopies were pushed together, but they were in no way water tight. The boys got so wet! I felt so bad for them, but it was hilarious listening to them wake up one by one at 5am on Saturday morning. "Why is my hair wet? My pants are soaked! Ahhhhg, that's a puddle! I didn't get any sleep!" It may not have been a snug dry sleep, but those guys definitely had some quality team bonding. 

Jeff ran his best time ever on the rough 3 mile cross country course (18:26), and placed 3rd in the community race! I ran my average-est time ever on that course (24:18) and placed 10th out of the women. My supernaturally tight ankle tendons were not exactly trail-ready, and every time I stepped wrong during the race, I had to hit the brakes to recover from the jolt of pain. I hobbled around the rest of the day in sandals and my ankle compression sleeve. Thankfully the tightness is manageable with the PT techniques I learned on Monday, but that was one of the strangest races I've ever run, not being sure what my ankle was going to let me do or how hard I could push myself. Somehow I ended up running 6 seconds faster than I did last year!

Amber has been running and is pretty fit. She got stung by some sort of insect twice during her race but pushed through to finish in 89th place out of 119 runners, with a time of 18:17. She had her desperate face on when she finished, and when I asked if she was ok, she cried, "I got stung on the ear by a BEE! and on my back!" Poor Amber especially hates having insects buzzing in her ears, so getting stung on her ear was one of her worst nightmares. 

Rose ran her first high school race ever and finished 5th on our varsity girls team! She got a side stitch near the end but Jeff and I agreed that she looked super strong. She finished 118th out of 206 runners, with a time of 25:37. Jeff doesn't usually run freshmen in varsity races for the first month of the season, but we gave Rose and her fellow freshman teammate Kaylee the option to run varsity if they felt up for the challenge. They both did great!

Jay ran his first race as team co-captain and his second varsity cross country race ever. He got swamped by mud and pushed through to finish 109th out of 241 runners, with a time of 20:27. What a day! I could go on about all of the other kids on our team, but I will stop because I really could use a nap.

As always, packing up and trudging the long way to the bus pick-up and cramming everything into the bottom of the bus was the hardest part of the trip. I slept way more than usual on the bus ride home, and my skeleton (and the chiropractor) may never forgive me.

Heading out the door on the first day of seminary! It was so nice having Jay drive! He got his license the day before seminary ended last year, so this was his second time driving himself to seminary without a parent. YES!

I went on a run and didn't break!

My daily nemesis is loading the wagon, my scooter, and heavy 5 gallon water jugs into the trunk and arranging them so they don't spill.

Red sunrise through the gathering smoke during my second run of the week on Thursday. My current hope is to run every other day as I work on my tendon mobility and strength.

I got Amber two cute collared uniform dresses, and even though her school doesn't have uniforms, she was excited to wear them to school. With a sports bra and running shorts underneath, of course.

Amber did the plyometrics and ran a mile through the hallways at indoor cross country practice all in a dress, then plopped down in the middle of the gym floor to read.

Smoky red sunset

The school bus cram. Maybe it's a good thing we aren't allowed to take more than 30 kids overnight, because not a single piece of extra gear would have fit under this bus.

Our annual on the way to Ultimook school bus selfie celebrating: "we did all the work to get this far, but we still have SO MUCH to do before we can rest!"

The Oregon Coast: we stopped 5 miles south of our usual Cape Meares Beach because there was a very long curvy detour and we didn't want to finish taking it.

Amber

Jay, running with his teammate friends Jordan and Adriel.

I stayed near Amber and went for a leisurely stroll in the tide while the team ran.

Amber ran towards me and fell in a sand ditch right when I snapped the picture--continuing my streak of accidentally photographing my kids' accidents, haha. (I have a picture of Jay falling off the trampoline and breaking his arm in kindergarten! Amber wasn't injured with this fall, thankfully.)

Rose on the left.

Rose collected a massive pile of sand dollars!

The team, returning from jumping in the waves post-run.

Our team!

The seniors. Next year, Jay will be in this picture. I can't think like that though. Six of these 11 seniors are first-year cross country runners!

Hiking back up to the bus. This spot wasn't as good as our usual spot at Cape Meares because of this steep climb back to the road.

Tillamook Creamery for dinner and ice cream!

Rose and Amber shared a tiny tent.

Our camp in the mist: that blue tent on the right belonged to someone else.

 My warm-up for the race involved walking and drills, not running. It was weird and felt so foreign. I miss the days where a 10 minute jog and a few stride outs were enough!

Amber did some high knees to warm up for her race.

Post race pictures.

Raising my sore ankle.

Amber's huge race! She's right there in the middle.

Amber, almost done with her race!

That desperate look of betrayal and exhaustion was tragic! Getting stung twice during a hard cross country race was too much.

Someone brought body markers, so everyone made sure to decorate their skin for their races.

Rose was all painted up with smiley faces. She asked me to draw a heart on her left forearm after I took this picture.

Our varsity girls team, on the starting line! It's so fun having a full varsity girls team of SEVEN runners.

It was a big race of 209 girls.

Rose (in white), trudging through the mud pit with her teammate Bethany (in blue).

Rose, heading towards the finish line! My lack of mobility shows in the lack of variety in pictures. I could make it to this spot OR the finish. I could watch the start OR the mud pit. It is very limiting not being able to run all over the place! I used up all of the running my tendons could handle for the day during the race.

Our girls team captain, Kennedy, did an epic planned belly flop into the mud pit. Her braids looked sculpted out of mud after the race.

Varsity boys before their race. All clean! Jay opted to wear his jeans-patterned shorts instead of getting the custom Sasquatch Ultimook shorts like everyone else. I offered to get him the shorts, but he declined. He isn't big on bright patterns. This picture made Jay look extra tall--which he is, compared to the rest of the team. The guy right next to Jay is Ignacio, a foreign exchange student from southern Spain who is now our number one runner! Most of the kids on our team speak Spanish, but I overheard them saying they heart Ignacio talk in his sleep while they were camping, and they said "he said something in his actual language, so I don't know what he said." I guess I'm not the only American who finds European Spanish much harder to decipher!

Boys varsity on the starting line, ready to run!

I did not get many pictures of Jay--his race was packed and everyone was so muddy and fast I just had to watch instead of taking pictures. This was the best I could do--taken in the finishing chute. Jay looks like he survived a major battle!

Meanwhile Rose said this was her favorite best trip to Ultimook ever! I still wish I had gotten a picture of Jay and Rose together after their first high school meet on the same team! Oh well. 

The last climb up a steep bank to load the bus and leave. This part is a miracle every year. It is so hard to lug all that gear and get it crammed into the bus, and to get the tired kids to lug that gear and cram it into the bus. 

We survived another Ultimook!