He’s played baseball. He’s played basketball. He’s played floor hockey. He’s had swim meets. And now for his 5th competitive sport, my son had his first cross country meet on Friday afternoon.
What the heck do I know about running? Not much. Growing up, I hated to run. We had to run for baseball practice; I was like the last one. I wasn’t fast nor was I a distance runner. As I got older, I did the whole running thing for a bit, especially when I was in LA. Jogging around the neighborhood, getting my exercise in; it was OK. Actually did some races too. Ran a 5K, 10K, and surprisingly a half marathon! I finished in each case; didn’t feel the need to go for the full marathon. I haven’t been running for a minute now, unless you count running routes at the park with my son, or running around fielding grounders and fly balls that he hits. Hey, it’s something. But Cross Country? Foreign to me no doubt…
Not my son though. He can do, and has done pretty much everything. He’s a really fast runner. When they offered cross country at his school for the first time in history, he was interested. He’s had a few practices before the first meet on Friday. We made it there in decent time, considering it was a Friday right after school. As we waited for the meet to begin, I realized this was going to be a lot bigger than I expected. I didn’t know what to expect, but there were literally hundreds of kids there from maybe a dozen different schools. Let’s do this.
First up was the JV girls; the first girl from his school to finish was actually in his class… nice! The JV boys, including my son, were up next. A little more background before we get to the meet… my son was not 100%. He was a little congested in the morning; not enough to keep him home, he still felt fine. When we picked him up to head to the meet, he looked wiped. Still said he was OK, but you could tell he was a bit off. I told him come on… Walter Payton had his flu game, Michael Jordan had his flu game, now it’s your turn to have your “flu meet”. I know he didn’t have the flu, just go with it. The kids lined up, about 150 of them just for his meet, the judge fired the gun, and off they went.
The run was a mile long for his age group, which was made up of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. I got some video of him at the starting line, and then again down the homestretch. I had never seen his face like that. He was really pushing it; you could tell he was tired. A 6th grader from his school actually finished in 3rd, followed by a kid in my son’s class at 4th; you could tell they both play travel soccer. About a minute later, here comes my son. He ended up finishing in about 8 minutes, which was good for 55th out of approximately 150 kids; not bad for his first time, with limited practice, not feeling 100%. Not making excuses, just saying. Just proud that he did it, he tried something different again, and did well. This kid is really something.
Don’t know if there will be a future in cross country, outside of the 2 remaining meets the next 2 Fridays, but it’s always fun to watch my son compete, in whatever. It’s one of my favorite things in the world.
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