October Sunshine

 October has been so warm this year! Usually by October the heat breaks and we ease into mellow 70 degree afternoons, but this year we've been sweating it out in 80+ degree heat at cross country practice for the entire season. The tomatoes in my tiny wild garden stayed stubbornly green well into October. The sweet scent of sun-ripened grapes growing in the fields behind our house hung thick in the warm air for longer than usual. The heat finally broke this week and yesterday was the first time all season that I have needed to wear long sleeves for a run.

October is when we start fulfilling our favorite traditions, both in our family and on our cross country team:

Spa Day, Race Day

Another week has come and gone. As coaches, Jeff and I have entered the "hang in there" phase of the high school cross country season, where we are physically and mentally drained--still happy with coaching and excited for our runners to improve, but also very tired from the rigorous schedule we've been keeping for the past almost two months. The season will be over in less than three weeks! (Four weeks if someone qualifies for state.) We can do this! We love our team.

One of the things that gets progressively harder as cross country season progresses is spending quality family time. Jeff and I get so worn out (and our kids do too), that when we're all home together in evenings after practice or on Sundays, all we want to do is veg. Lounge. Relax. Not think or interact or exert ourselves. Thankfully cross country season is only ten weeks of this intensity, but I still feel a little bad that most of our at-home time is spent draped around the house like a bunch of blobs. So I was proud of myself for exerting myself a little on Friday when my kids and I had some free time at home together.

Courage & Conference

 Once again, our week was dominated by cross country season, with a few new extras sprinkled in. Jeff had a bout of what we assumed is long-covid relapse, since his symptoms of nausea and elevated heart rate were the same as what he experienced last spring. This caused him to miss one day of cross country practice as well as our cross country meet on Saturday, which meant his assistant coach (hi!) took charge. 

It is always daunting for me to face 30 teenagers with my not-loud voice, so I used our starter's microphone and portable speaker to amplify my voice at practice. It worked wonders, and my voice actually echoed off of a nearby building at the park during practice! I felt so powerful, and practice went relatively well even without Jeff's presence. 

 

This little headset and around-the-neck speaker were powerful!

5k Progress and the Connell Meet

This post has two parts, and both are about running: 1. my own 5k progress, and 2. the Connell cross country meet.

I. 5k Progress

On Friday, September 23rd, I woke up sore and tired from the rigors of hosting the home cross country meet the day before. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go on a run by myself before running at cross country practice later, but when I looked at the calendar, I realized that this was my last chance for over a week to get in my own 5k time trial. So once the kids were at school, I pulled on my running clothes and jogged up Scoon Road. Scoon Road is a long straight road that is a very gentle 1%-1.8% grade going north uphill. It's so gradual that the incline is barely noticeable going up, but going down feels speedy and amazing.

The Sunnyside League Meet

Thursday was a big deal for the Sunnyside High School cross country program. We hosted our first ever league meet in school history, with seven schools and close to 300 runners attending! It was a LOT of work. I'll start with Wednesday night to set the stage:

Wednesday, September 21st journal excerpt: I had an RS presidency meeting tonight and that was a lot (responsibilities, emotion, struggling sisters, etc.). When I got home, my period started. (No surprises; it was right on schedule--just a few hours early--but still annoyingly persistent.) Then Jeff and I laid out our plans for tomorrow, which is our first time ever hosting a league cross country meet. It's going to be a long day. I knew I'd probably be on my period for this meet, but I was hoping the flow would start tomorrow night instead. No luck. Sigh. I know I can do hard things while I'm "flowing," but that doesn't mean I want to! I do it all anyways, but everything is just harder (and grosser).

Fort Steilacoom

We tried our best not to, but we ended up scheduling a 4am school bus departure for the Fort Steilacoom Cross Country Invitational in Lakewood, WA on Saturday. In the past, (pre-covid), we have done the Lakewood meet with that dread early wake up and it was such an exhausting day, we tried to find a workaround this year. Our original workaround plan for this year was to only send the varsity boys to the speedy super-competitive meet in Lakewood (4 hours away), and send the rest of the high school team and the middle school team to the closer, less intensely competitive Wenatchee Invitational (2.5 hours away). The varsity boys' race in Lakewood wasn't till the afternoon, so they wouldn't have to get up before dawn for it like they would if we brought the JV and middle school runners, whose races were much earlier in the day. Nobody would have to get up before 5am.

Smoke and Spray

Smoke: Wildfire smoke rolled in thick and hung in the air for Monday and Tuesday this week, forcing us indoors for cross country practice and cloaking our skies in gray gloom. Gloomy days make me somewhat existential, apparently: When I was done cooking on Monday, I sat down and thought about the ridiculous amount of time that I spend planning, purchasing, and prepping food. At least a third, if not more, of my existence revolves around this menial but necessary task. And my active teenage and preteen kids have begun eating SO MUCH! Some days it feels like all I do is plan and prepare for the next meal/feeding frenzy.

July & August Books

This summer I read less than usual, so I decided to combine my July and August reading lists. July was mostly romantic vacation re-reads, so I didn't write plot summaries or opinions. I need familiar easy fluff in summertime! In August I finally finished reading my nonfiction book (The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal) and read an actual new book too. Progress! 

School and cross country

Journal excerpts from this week of school and cross country:

Tuesday, September 5th: Whew, I have been thirsty all day. Coaching cross country practice in the heat is extremely dehydrating. I have been drinking so much and I am still thirsty! 

Today I felt so organized: I started the Roomba as Amber was leaving for school (she caught the school bus at 8am). Then I did some yoga and ran 5 miles in the gorgeous cool morning weather. I got half of my ministering interviews done today and even made dinner before cross country practice. I used the saute mode on the instant pot to cook the sausage and white beans and then turned it on slow cook mode to keep it hot until dinnertime after practice. It was a hearty filling meal. Jay had two bowls of it plus two pieces of cornbread. The bottomless pit teenage boy stomach begins. 

Ultimook 2022

This was our fourth year attending the overnight Ultimook cross country meet at Hydrangea Ranch in Tillamook, Oregon. Last year we locked in the ideal schedule for this team trip, which took a lot of guesswork out and made it easier to relax and enjoy the journey this time around. We took an enthusiastic, fun-loving group of 14 high schoolers plus our own three kids to this beloved meet. It was gratifying and satisfying to watch the returning runners relish the traditions of this trip and see the new runners have a blast with the fun experience. 

We spent a little over ten hours on the school bus round trip, slept in sleeping bags in a barn loft, bathed in a river, lived off of granola bars and PBJ between dinners, and got soaked to the skin with rain on Saturday morning. This trip is always pretty grueling for us coaches, but we will keep coming back for more every year because it is such a FUN, positive, worthwhile experience for the kids. It's refreshing to take a step back from the intensity and monotony of training for distance running and just play on the beach, stay up late camping, and race through some mud and rivers the next morning. Even though this trip was tiring, Jeff and I had fun with it too--I think I say this every year, but it felt like we were on a family vacation with 14 extra kids in our family. Here's the timeline breakdown:

School Begins

The first day of school was on the late date of Thursday, September 1st. Of course, teachers including Jeff, always go back to work a week before school starts. And high school sports still needed ten practices before the first competition, so official cross country practice started almost two whole weeks before school. A few days before fall sports began, there was a parent meeting. So even though we had a so-called extended summer with our late school start date, we were not free to wander or go on adventures for the last 2.5 weeks of summer break. 

Jay is in 8th grade, Rose is in 6th grade and her first year of middle school, and Amber is in 2nd grade.

August misc.

August has ended! Here are a few miscellaneous journal clips to go along with some miscellaneous August pictures: 

Monday, August 8th: Jeff went grocery shopping with me for the second week in a row, and I am feeling so spoiled with our simple happy summer routines! I want more time before the intensity of school and cross country schedules begin again. I mean, we have a few weeks, but still. It's slipping  away so fast! And thanks to that deer destroying our van, we might not make it to the beach this summer for the second summer in a row! Boo! I made two batches of apricot freezer jam today because the apricots were turning to mush and I couldn't wait any longer, even though I was tired and not in the mood for jamming. 

We read Psalm 23 for CFM tonight and then sang hymn #108, The Lord is My Shepherd, while I played it badly on the piano. We sang all three verses and it was not great music. In fact, it was hilarious and I kept laughing while doggedly playing whatever notes I could manage. I couldn't even sing past the first line because I was struggling to play the notes, so Jeff had to carry the tune. Each verse, Jeff switched parts from bass to tenor to melody, which confused the kids greatly. For family game night we played two loud intense rounds of Uno. Jeff won both games.