The Sunburn 2026

 We hosted our home cross country meet, The 4th Annual Sunburn Cross Country Invitational, on Saturday, September 12th. As usual, it was a lot of work! But at the end of the day, Jeff and I looked at each other and agreed that it all went smoothly--usually we have at least one big snag, but we didn't this year! Come to think of it, maybe this year's snag happened the day before the meet while we were measuring the course. We had a list of distances between landmarks on the course from last year, so we walked the measuring wheel between each landmark to make sure it was accurate. The numbers were not adding up! We were so confused, because we have hosted meets at this course four times (the annual Sunburn Invite meet three times, plus one league meet) and the distance has always been perfect. Why was it different this time?? 

The city parks and rec department mowed an extra short path of grass following our course map, so we thought maybe their mow job was throwing us off a little bit. At the end of 2 hours, I walked the entire course, spray painting critical corners with yellow paint. While I walked, I recorded the course with my GPS watch and discovered that it was actually a hair long, with the adjustments we had made to squeeze more distance out of it. We threw up our hands and went to cross country practice, leaving the course overnight. 

After all that head scratching, we realized that our meter wheel was probably not calibrated properly! 

When I marked the course with two volunteers on Saturday morning, I put the cones and flags back to where I remembered them being from years past, rather than where we had adjusted the course the day before. I checked Rose's GPS watch data after her race and discovered that Garmin recorded the full course at 3.14 miles. That's almost perfect! A 5k is 3.125 miles. I felt triumphant that my instincts were correct. 

Rewind to Saturday morning: Jeff and I left home at 7am in two separate cars and drove to the high school track shed to pick up all of the gear we needed for the meet. Our third cross country coach, Coach Campos, met us at the shed with his pickup truck. We loaded everything into our three vehicles so we only had to make one trip to the park 2 miles away. It was so nice having three adults and three vehicles to move all the stuff to the park! 

Since Sunnyside's financial situation is dire, there was no potable water available at the park. We had 211 kids running at the park with no running water! While Jeff and Coach Campos drove to the park, I filled four 5-gallon water jugs and two 10-gallon water jugs and loaded them into my minivan before heading to the park. I can lift 5 gallon water jugs easily--I do it every day for cross country practice--but those 10 gallon jugs are a different story. I perfected this awkward penguin-like waddle with the massive jug sloshing just above the ground between my legs. The next day, my inner thighs were sore in a way that reminded me of my horseback riding childhood! Thankfully that 40 gallons of water that I laboriously lugged was plenty. We had about 10 gallons left at the end of the meet.

As I was driving out of the track area with my six sloshing jugs of water, I waved at the high school athletic director. He noted my jam packed minivan full of water and other supplies and said offhandedly, "You know, we have event staff whose job it is to help with setup like this." Say what? This is my NINTH year coaching high school cross country and I didn't know we were allowed to ask for help with meet setup! I always see the staff out setting up for football and soccer games, but I assumed that if they were available to track and cross country, the athletic director would offer to schedule them for us. I told our athletic director that I would be calling him for help next year when it was time to fill the water jugs for our home cross country meet.

My big hack this year for hosting a cross country meet was wearing my tall rubber boots for the first three hours of the day. The grass at the park is long and wet every year, and every year I suffer the whole day with sopping wet squishy shoes from hiking around marking the course. Not this year! My feet were warm and dry all during setup, and I changed into my running shoes once the grass was dry. We had plenty of people come help set up the course, and it went so smoothly! It was amazing not feeling so alone and overwhelmed with the massive task of marking and setting up a 3.1 mile cross country course. We were incredibly grateful to the parents, families, and missionaries who came at 8am on a Saturday morning to help us set up.

Since the Sunburn XC meet is a pretty small meet, Jeff consolidated our meet schedule into three races this year:

10:30am - Middle school and novice high school 2.5K race (1.55 miles). A combined 94 kids ran this race: 42 MS boys, 22 HS boys, 19 MS girls, and 11 HS girls.

11:10am - High school girls race (varsity and JV combined). 31 girls ran this race.

11:50am - High school boys race (varsity and JV combined). 86 boys ran this race.

Amber ran the 1.5 mile middle school race in 11:49, and finished 2nd overall among middle school girls! Only a girl from a running club beat her. Go Amber! She just cruised around the course. I had to call her off the playground 3 minutes before the race started. She sprinted over to the starting line and then ran her race. 

Rose ran the high school girls' 5k race. She was cruising for the first 2 miles, but then the wheels fell off when her feet went numb. She said she thinks she tied her spikes too tight! She finished 11th in 26:42, and was the #5 runner on our girls team (top 5 score points). Our girls team won the meet! Only one other school fielded a full team, but Sunnyside girls finished #1, 2, 3, 4, and 11, so it was a strong showing regardless of team numbers.

Jay ran the high school boys' 5k race. He finished 12th overall in 19:43, 4th on our boys team. Everyone was bemoaning how slow and hard our course feels with all of its sharp turns that kill rhythm and pace, but even though the times were a bit slower than current fitness suggests, the team ran strong and Jeff and I felt so proud of them and excited for the season!

[full results here.]

My latest professional accomplishment: filling and hauling 40 gallons of water to a cross country meet. My everyday routine only has me fill and haul 10 gallons of water, so this was quadruple my normal load.

I took this picture as I approached the park field during meet setup on Saturday morning. My photography was sparse during the meet because there was a lot going on! 

Go Amber! She passed that girl.

The high school girls' race start: Rose is right in the middle in the tall socks, braided pigtails flying.

Go Sunnyside! This is our fastest girls team by far, in all of Jeff's 10 years as head coach.

Rose, rounding one of the many sharp turns.

Rose crossing the finish line!

Go Jay!

Jay's racing spikes were hurting his feet too--both Jay and Rose had foot pain from spikes during this race. I don't know what to do about it. Spikes aren't meant to be comfortable and cushy, but they shouldn't hurt runners' feet either. Jay and Rose plan to experiment with different lacing techniques to see if it helps. 

Jay, finishing his first race of his senior cross country season!

At least one ice cream truck always shows up to our meet, so getting ice cream after racing has become a Sunburn tradition. I gave Rose my credit card and she came back with THIS. I forgot to put a dollar limit on her purchase, and told her she might owe me some money for that massive banana split, but turns out it was only $6. 

Coach selfie after the meet was over and cleaned up and all put away in the track shed! Coach Campos had already left and he doesn't strike me as the selfie type, so we did our traditional XC selfie alone together.

Rose and I spent some time with the puppies after the meet. They liked our salty sweaty skin a little too much, haha.

Each kid has an island on the kitchen floor of their heap of stuff. This picture makes the piles look small, but there are several changes of clothes, an instrument, backpacks, water, school supplies, etc. I haven't had the energy to force them to clean it all up yet. Basically, this is what a coaching season does to our house.

Our kitchen counter is even worse! The pile-up is intense, especially since after meets, Jeff likes to set up the meet timing laptop on the counter while he enters and checks results.

One cross country meet done, 9 to go!