My First Adventures in Cross Country Coaching!

This week was the first week of practice for Fall Sports at the high school I teach at.  And that could only mean one thing...cross country practice started.  I have to admit, I was a little nervous about the first practice.  The reason for my timid attitude was that I knew the head coach always went on the runs with the kids, meaning that, as the assistant coach, I would also be expected to go on the runs with the kids.  Now, don't get me wrong, I love to run.  But I love to run at my own pace (which trust me, much to my chagrin, isn't going to be qualifying me for Boston any time soon), and I don't particularly enjoy having others watch me struggle to keep up, especially when those 'others' happen to be my own students.  In the week leading up to the first practice, I even had nightmares about all the kids zooming ahead of me while I wheezed and huffed and puffed, trying in vain to catch up, but never getting even close.

I finally decided to use my 'glass is half full' approach, and figured that there were bound to be first-timers and slower kids who I could run with, while the head coach kept pace with the faster runners.  And if worst came to worst, I could always tell the kids that I was going to bring up the rear, and their job was to stay ahead of me, because if I caught up to them, we as coaches would know they were dogging it!  Ok, plan in place...until I showed up Monday morning and the only kid with his physical done, and therefore cleared to practice, is the fastest kid on the team.  So it's the head coach (a seasoned runner), the fastest kid, and me...grrrrrreeeeaaattt!  We start the run, and I'm assuming the worst, just waiting for them to leave me in the dust.  So imagine my surprise when, a mile into the run, they're still beside me and I haven't been left behind.  Granted, I think for the first practice with only one kid, the head coach decided to take it easy, but still, it made me feel a lot better about coming back for the second practice.  The next day, a couple more kids had cleared, so it was now the head coach (experienced), the four fastest runners on the team (experienced), and me (amateur).  We headed to one of the local parks to do a trail run, and I could at least console myself with the knowledge that trails are narrow, and odds were we would have to run in a single file line, so being at the back wouldn't be as big of a deal.

We got going, and to my supreme surprise, I was again able to keep up.  Now it is very possible that the head coach had a meeting with the kids informing them of how slow I was and that they were not allowed to make me look foolish by leaving me too far behind, but my ego would like to believe that it was just the fact that I'm not in as bad of shape as my mind thinks I am.  There were even several blackberry bushes along the route, and we had a good time randomly picking berries and snacking throughout the run to keep our sugar levels up.

Needless to say, these two runs had given me a little more confidence that I could at least keep up with the kids on the average day of practice.  I wasn't delusional enough to believe I had transformed into Nick Symmonds (Olympic runner I went to high school with)...

...but I was starting to at least believe that maybe I've turned into an ok runner after all.

Wednesday, we headed to Anderson Island on the ferry for a team building day.  I woke up thinking "this is going to be a fun little field trip", and I was so excited that I wore my new Brooks running shirt that Michael got me for my birthday (it's got the logo for the Rock 'N' Roll Marathon Series logo on it) and my new Asics Gel Nimbus 13 running shoes and Thorlo running socks.

Don't worry, I was also wearing pants, they just weren't new enough/exciting enough to mention or take a picture of.

Little did I know that those 10 words were about to jinx us royally.  The second we drove off the ferry and onto the Island, we immediately proceeded to get lost for 45 minutes trying to find the trail the head coach wanted the kids to run.  I swear we must have driven up and down the same road six or seven times, only to find out (when we finally stopped to ask for directions) that we kept turning around about 200 yards before coming to the right road.  Then once we started our run, both the head coach and one of the girls got bitten by wasps as we ran along the trail.  Thankfully, the kid who is deathly allergic to bees didn't get stung, so we were able to keep running and the trail wound us through the woods, and eventually ended at the beach, which was littered with hundreds of intact, whole sand dollars.  I decided to take home a few (the kids were nice enough to put them in their pockets so I wouldn't have to carry them all on our hike back to the van).

After the run, we drove to a little park to have lunch and play a few games.  The kids had asked me to bring a volleyball with me, and they proceeded to start up a game.  They asked me to join them, and when I agreed, one of them tossed me the ball so that I could have a turn serving.  There must have been a bee on the ball when she tossed it to me, because the second I caught the volleyball, I immediately got stung.  Now, this is only the second time in my entire life that I have been stung by a bee (the first time was almost 9 years ago), but both stupid bees managed to sting me in the EXACT same place: the side of my knuckle on my right middle finger.  My finger swelled to about twice it's size, and my entire hand throbbed until I went to bed that night.  You might be thinking that our quota for bad luck on one trip had been all used up...but you would be wrong.  As we were leaving the park to head to the beach, the head coach didn't realize that one of the kids was getting something out of the back of the van, and started to reverse.  Luckily, I had looked back and started yelling "stop stop stop stop", so he slammed on the brakes and avoided hitting him...scared the kid quite a bit though, and I doubt any of the runners will mess around at the back of any school van the head coach is driving again.  Oh the bad luck isn't over yet!  Once we got to the beach, so many of us had been stung/bitten by bees/wasps that the head coach decided he'd better acquaint himself with the epi pen (shoots epinephrine into the person so that they don't immediately swell up and you have time to get them to the hospital) for the runner who is allergic to bees.  He was trying to figure out how to use it, when he accidentally stuck himself in the thumb with the epi pen.  He pulled it out quickly, but the damage had been done.  The warning packet that comes with the pen said that if you shoot yourself in one of your digits, you should go to the emergency room immediately, but the head coach didn't want to ruin the trip, so he just continually swung his arm around in a windmill like motion to keep the blood flowing to his hand (he got enough blood flow back that we didn't have to rush him to the hospital).  Thankfully, karma had decided that we'd had enough bad luck for one day, and the ferry ride back to the mainland, and the following van ride back to the school were delightfully uneventful.

Tomorrow is the last practice for the week, and I have to say, it will be nice to have the first week of practice under my belt.  And while I enjoy running with the kids, I must say I'm looking forward to my runs this weekend where it will be just me, my i-pod, and the road!

Do you prefer to run on your own, or with others?