Cross Country

This afternoon I ran over the hill to Contra Loma Park to tour around on the trails for a few miles. As I was about to head back around the lake and over the hill home, cars and buses with high school runners were arriving for a cross country meet. I coached cross country in the 70s and 80s in Arkansas, attended a couple of meets in TX, and ran CC a couple of years when I was a student at Harding back in 69-71, but a Thursday afternoon CC meet took me all the way back to Hueneme HS days. While almost all of our meets in college and when I was coaching were Saturday meets, in HS we ran lots of Thursday dual or double-dual meets, running only occasional big meets on Saturdays. There's just something special about the head-to-head intimacy of a dual meet. :)

Heading home, I had a message that she had been released from jury duty in Martinez early today, without being selected for the jury (yea!!) and was on her way home. I called her with the news about the meet, and she was excited as well. You see, in HS (although they didn't have girls sports in those days) both her brother and her boyfriend (me) ran CC, so she loved going to meets.

We walked over the hill in time to see part of the varsity girls race and the varsity boys race as well. The course had enough hills to be challenging, but was still pretty fast. There were some really good runners, and it was fun watching the races. The one thing that was missing... which I actually didn't miss at all... was that queezy feeling in the stomach that comes with both competing and coaching. It was fun to just watch the races, enjoying the performances of the runners.

We walked back over the hill and headed home. Virginia had to hurry to get ready to go to a "witches party"... but that's another story.