First Cross Country Meet

Hank's first cross country (XC) meet was Sunday afternoon. He woke up not wanting to run at all. I convinced him to run this one race and then decide if he was going to quit XC. In the end, he did a great job and had fun with his friends, but he hasn't decided if he's going to stay on the team or not. 

It's tough that football and XC run concurrently with games on Saturday and meets on Sunday. BUT come the end of October, both seasons are over and he doesn't have anything but Cub Scouts until March, and Scouts is just 3x/month so it's not a big deal either.  I've also explained to him that to play football well, he needs to be able to run hard for a long time. The best way to do that is to, well, run hard for a long time, like you do in XC.

Our schedule is a little off this week and he's going to miss both XC practices so maybe having that little break will help him out.

Aaaaanyway, back to his meet. Our team hosted it so we parents had to help out. I mostly worked the finish line but also did some course marshalling which is a little skeery. I'm always worried I'll accidently point them in the wrong direction which is silly, but still.

Working the finish line is always exciting and a little nerve wracking. The good thing is that most of the kids know to stay in the right order but you always have 1 or 2 who are a little out of it and start walking all over the shoot trying to pass folks to get to the water. 

I also enjoyed the distinct pleasure of having not 1, not 2, but 3 kids fall at my feet and puke. Lovely. Thankfully my feet were faster and I didn't get any on me. That would have been a bad, bad thing. I don't handle other kids' puke very well, and I may have ended up joining them!

The Team
They range in age from 7 to 14 and are a really nice group of kids.

Heading out for the course walk with Coach George

This is in the first quarter mile or so. He did a great job of not getting sucked into the super speedy pace of the lead pack, and he was able to run his own pace (something I still struggle to do!)

I ran from this point (picture above) which was near the finish line, down the hill, across the football field, up another hill, across another field to get the next picture and of course cheer my lungs out.

He has about half a mile to go. I think he was thinking bad thoughts from the look on his face! lol!

Ran across the field, down the hill,  across the football field, up the hill to the last 50 yards to cheer him on. We're not allowed to pace them at all - they can be disqualified - so I didn't run to the finish to cheer him on in those last 15 yards. I also didn't want to be one of THOSE parents, but I think with some extra cheering he could have passed the kid in black. Just sayin...

In the end he finished in 9:40, 12th/24 which isn't bad at all. It was a pretty hilly course and his first race at that distance. I hope he continues with it because I think he could be really good at it - never too early to start thinking about scholarship possibilities! He was also the first finisher on his team which is pretty cool.

I'm very proud of my favorite 8 year old!