The Traditional Track Takeover

 It has come, like it does every spring: the time when track season takes over basic life functions. I managed to squeeze in a few non-track things amidst the planning, prepping, coaching, and clerking this week, but mostly track is life right now. Journal excerpts are keeping this blog afloat right now:

Monday, March 23rd: I played Jon Schmidt's All of Me on the piano in 3:54 today! 3 minutes and 54 seconds!! After almost 4 months of intense practice, I reached my goal of playing that hard 8 page song with 5 flats in less than 4 minutes! It was electrifying! Seriously I was so amped up when I finished, I felt jittery, pumped and empowered, like I could do anything! That energy stayed with me all day. I pruned almost a whole long row of raspberries and cut down an actual tree that was growing in the middle of the berries. I taught a group of 25 middle schoolers how to do hurdles. I lifted weights and ran 3 miles. I was awesome today, even though I was very tired from sleeping not great over the weekend and getting up extra early to attend seminary this morning.

Rose is a science fair queen!! She placed 1st in the local science fair a few weeks ago and 2nd in the regional science fair last week! She came home loaded with prizes today: certificates, swag, trophy, a big fat ribbon, and $175 of prize money! 

Tuesday, March 24th: So tired. We hosted a dual track meet against Eastmont HS today, and they have a huge team so it took just as long as hosting a regular league meet. And it was cold and WINDY. I was at the track for almost 8 hours, from setup at noon to cleanup finishing at 7:45pm. Whew! I don't even know if I have energy to say anything else about it. Eastmont didn't bring any varsity distance runners, so our distance kids basically ran against each other. It was disappointing for them not to have many non-teammates to race against. 

But Jay won the 3200!! It was his first time winning a track race! When I asked him how it felt to win, he said "kind of empty" because nobody was close to running with him and he won by well over 100 meters. We combined the girls and boys 2 mile races, so Rose and Jay ran at the same time. Jay and Rose also both ran the 4x800m relay, and Rose threw the discus and also jumped into the B squad team in the 4x400 relay when they needed one more leg. I'm tired just writing about all that! 

Poor patient Amber wrapped up in a giant blanket and sat in the wind reading a book for most of the meet. Jeff did the timing, I was the clerk, and Dan Winger was the starter. We got things done. Scott Thomas was in the tent with Jeff, and he did the field event entries real time, so Jeff and I had no result entries to do when we got home! It made a huge difference. We got fast food for dinner on the way home, including our traditional post-meet-hosting fried asparagus. We were home by 8:20pm. 

Wednesday, March 25th: I am a refugee from the wind. 8 hours out in it yesterday working at the track meet, plus another 2 hours coaching in the wind today has left me feeling overstimulated and exhausted. Today I didn't run, but I did mow around the fruit trees on the front lot this morning before the wind picked up again. Track practice was in sustained 20mph winds, but at least it was sunny today. Wow, I really don't have anything else to say. So tired.

Thursday, March 26th: Wow, it's still Thursday. Whew. I don't feel like writing down everything that's on my mind! It's so hard to get it all written out in a short enough time frame so I can go to bed! I'll try a brief list:

• Our middle school throws coach, a solid amazing guy who has coached with me since day 1, got into some classes at the local tech school last minute (he didn't think they'd accept him till later) and he is going to have to resign for this track season because the classes are during practice. He still plans to help out and he definitely plans to coach next year, but waaaahhh! I support his further education completely, but it's still sad to see him go. Will another person even apply for the job? If so, when would they be hired, and also, how much will they know about track? I'm so sad! 
• Today I accidentally taught the MS kids to jump off the wrong foot for high jump: it's not the quick foot you jump off of; it's the strong foot, because it can stop and block with power for the jump. The high school jumps coach must've noticed from afar, and he came over to kindly teach me the difference! He was about as nice as possible about it, he didn't make me feel bad at all. But I still couldn't help feeling so lame for not knowing! haha. 
• We might have our first middle school track meet in a few days-- next Tuesday! But it's in the hands of the transportation office-- will they be able to get a bus for us? If not, we won't be able to go to the meet. Last minute uncertainty.
• Jeff and I switched cars to save gas, since gas is $5.00 per gallon and climbing. I drove his electric car today instead of our van. The original plan was for Jeff to drive the van to school each day because that's only one trip to and from town using gas, as opposed to the 2-4 trips I make per day. But today Jeff snagged a ride to school with Jay, and he's planning on doing that again tomorrow, so we have to do some familial coordinating to make sure everyone gets where they need to be.
• My tendons are tired and sore from lifting and running and doing sprint drills at track practice today. 
• All week, our van beeped at me annoyingly due to a low battery in one key fob and a bad battery in the other. So I ordered new batteries and finally got to replace them yesterday, just in time for me to stop using the van.
• Jeff left for some track and other sports responsibilities without telling me goodbye tonight, and I felt sad and lonely. I told him about how I felt, and when he came home, he was very sweet to make up for it. Clearly I am tired, because normally I am less emotionally needy, haha.

Friday, March 27th: I used some stinky black bananas to make banana oat muffins this morning. I don't generally like bananas or banana flavor, but these muffins turned out pretty good. I made the muffins AND washed the muffin tins all in the same day! (Washing muffin tins is a huge deterrent to me making muffins.) After that I felt like I deserved an adulting prize, or at least the reward of being done for the day. Hah. Those muffins about used up all of my allotted gumption for the day. Thankfully after a nice 90 minute reward phone call with my dear mom, I felt recharged enough to get on with the day.

I practiced piano and got All of Me down to a slightly shaky 3:49. I lost my spot a few times during that play-through, so if I can manage to play it without freezing up and losing the flow of the music, I will be able to get it into the 3:30s. Jon Schmidt's recording of this song takes 3:00, but I'm not a professional musician like him, so I don't aspire to that speed. I'm not actively trying to speed it up at this point; I'm just trying to play it better/more accurately, so it sounds smooth and confident. Smoothness and confidence: two of my biggest piano weaknesses! 

Middle school track practice was a bit chaotic today. We had game day and the kids chose tag: freeze tag, then zombie tag, but those games rarely hold their attention for long, and we had a bunch of other stuff to do, so we stopped tag a bit early and worked on meet entries for our first meet! 

Our fearless awesome organized middle school athletic director scheduled us a meet before spring break for the first time ever! We only had today and Monday to practice before the meet, so we kind of had to scramble to get ready today. We did event selection and then went inside the school to get out uniforms. Ugh that is my least favorite part of being a coach: musty uniform distribution, record-keeping, and return. Utter chaos. My two assistant coaches were champions helping dig through the bins, but I still had several kids slip through my fingers-- I'm going to have to ask them which items they took so I can make sure to record it right. Sigh. I feel like I always fail to be organized enough with uniform distribution, so it frazzles me. 

After all the uniform chaos, I ended up chatting with our middle school athletic director outside for quite a while. My phone kept ringing and buzzing, but I kept ignoring it. (more frazzling!) Jeff called. Laurs called. Even one of my assistant coaches called. Twice! Haha, eventually everything got sorted out. Jeff and I drove home together in the same car, since Jeff is dutifully avoiding expensive gas right now. It was pleasant to go home together, even though Jeff had to wait for me for once. We had family movie night with pizza and watched one episode of a show.  

Saturday, March 28th (no journal entry) was another high school track meet, this one in Yakima at West Valley High School. Rose threw discus and ran a siblings mixed medley relay with Jay and a set of twins on our team. Rose also ran the 1600m and had her best race in 2 years! She was alive and pushing! Her time of 6:38 was only 5 seconds off her lifetime mile PR from 7th grade! She was so happy, and I was so happy to see her happy! Jeff and I actually managed to watch Rose throw the discus, which is always fun. 

Jay ran the mixed relay on our siblings team, and also the 3200m. He knew he needed more endurance work to run a faster mile, so he asked to run the 3200 for the second time this week. He ran faster than he did all alone at our home meet on Tuesday, and got a good workout out of it. And the haircut I gave him the night before looked good too--look good, run good, I always say! (Grammar rules don't apply to mantras.)

Amber brought the last of her money that she didn't use at the book fair and bought herself some candy at the concession stand. She happily read books, climbed a tree, and kept the big high school boys' language in check at the team tent. Seriously, that girl has zero fear. I overheard her telling a big thrower guy "say something nice!" after he used a swear word. Amber is very intense about enforcing team rules, especially the no swearing rule. If someone swears, we tell them to say something nice to the person next to them. Amber is all-in with that rule, no matter how much bigger the person is than her! 

Jeff ran in the coaches' 4x100m relay at the end of the meet. I was relegated to "first alternate" for the Sunnyside coaches' team, haha. I was a little sad not to be included at first, but the closer the relay got, the more relieved I felt not to have to showcase my inability to sprint 100 meters in front of all the teams. I was amused when our team of 4 male coaches got third place to teams with two men and two women running! I loved watching all of the athletes dashing all over the infield while cheering on their coaches. It was a fun silly end to the meet. 

My Monday raspberry pruning: before picture.

After shot of pruning and cutting down that tree.

Amber and her book fair haul! She worked hard to earn the money for these books!

Rose and her science fair award haul: the fruits of her long hours of hard work.

One of our last drives in the van before we parked it and started relying on our two electric cars to avoid expensive gas. I think it's completely reasonable to drive the van some, but if Jeff is ok with making it work, we can make it work! If we can make it work easily enough, though, then why do we even have 3 cars? Hah!

The canal filled with water this week! It feels like an old friend has returned.

Jeff had to get extra innovative in the high winds at our home track meet. He lashed the starter speakers to a wagon to prevent them from tipping over in the strong wind. It was so convenient to be able to pull the wagon around the field to the various starting lines rather than lug the awkward speakers on tripods by hand!

"I'm inventing, mostly."

Rose running a relay!

Jay running out front in the 3200m. His time was 11:40--nothing fancy, but still enough to win by a LOT. Hence his self-proclaimed "hollow victory."

Jay, lapping Rose on the curve during the 3200m.

Coming off the curve with Jay in front.

That's my lonnng shadow between Jay and Rose, haha.

Jay finishing in first!

Rose ran a 15:23 and placed 2nd of the two girls who ran, but we agreed that with the wind it was a sub-15 minute effort.

The sky got pretty during the 4x400m relay.

Closing down the track and lugging gear back to the car!

My tulips are blooming!

Me, lugging the foam practice hurdles and wickets back to the high school shed after borrowing them for middle school practice. It was chilly and SO WINDY that day.

Rose at the meet on Saturday: braids and discus flying!

Rose has fun with discus.

Rose, looking strong in the 1600m! She placed 9th out of 13 runners, so she beat all 4 of those girls behind her!

I caught Jay cheering on his sister and it made me happy.

The sibling mixed relay! Two sets of brother-sister combos. Love these kids.

The sibling handoff: Jay to Rose!

Jay on the outside left, in the 3200m.

Jay placed 6th out of 13 runners in the 3200m, with a time of 11:28. Jeff is working on training plans to get him back under 11 minutes.

Sunnyside coaches relay team: Cole, Jeff, Scott, and Jake. While they were tying their shoes, it was hilarious hearing them grumble and joke about how long it's been since they wore spikes.