Off the Rails

Strange, in an abnormal or wildly uncontrollable way.

Well, off the rails is an overstatement. But I am a bit tired. Pooped out.

1: Exhausted. The track season ended

10 weeks. 3 practices a week. 5 3.5 hour meets. Up to 28 kids at a time at practice. If you don’t know, middle school kids are a bit unpredictable. They may just, at a moment's notice, run out into the street without a thought. Or, they may just fall over. They also become a whole lot faster over a 10 week period of time. Most impressive. A 6th grader ran a 5:34 1600 meters (4 laps). A 7th grader ran a 62 second lap. I can’t run that fast. I can keep going, sure, but I can’t go that fast at all. They’re fast.

Some middle schoolers are actually capable of running out of their shoes. They’ll be running along and then you’ll see this shoe just sitting there. I’ve seen it at practice a few times. Friday was the first time I’ve seen it at a meet. It was the 400 meters and the shoe was just sitting there on the corner. I heard someone say, “yeah, I saw a kid finish with one shoe”.  A kind girl from a different school picked it up and ran it to the finish area. I believe the shoe delivery was successful.

Have you ever seen those shoes tied together and hanging from power lines? Yeah… weird. I suspect middle schoolers.

The posts along the rec trail will frequently have solitary toddler shoes on top. Like a little ornament.  The kids in the strollers just want to BREAK FREE from foot oppression. 

If it’s warm, I do like to be shoe free. Some people like to run around barefoot all over the place. Not me. I grew up in Washington State. There were slugs everywhere.  Stepping on a slug barefoot is not fun and not something you want to repeat. After doing that a couple times I wore shoes outside.

2: Wrong way bucko

Yesterday morning I was walking back to campus from our Gym and saw this car heading toward to the DO NOT ENTER, WRONG WAY sign. The road in front of the school is one way and sometimes people don’t realize it. I waved the car down and got the lady to stop. I said, hey this is a one way street. You’ll need to go around to get down there. She said, “NO, I have to go this way to deliver this food donation.” I said, “it’s a school, that’s not safe, please go around.” “No, I have to go this way”. I just looked at her. I knew at this point it was pointless so I told her I was taking a picture of her license plate to send to the police and she said fine.  So she stayed still while I went to the back of her car and took a photo and then she proceeded to drive the wrong way down the one way street for about 100 yards to the food place. When she got there she had to do a u-turn to park. Thankfully nothing bad happened. Three people were watching and all just stood there with their mouths open. I forwarded the photo to one of our parents at school. He’s a local police officer. I imagine she’s been contacted. A good talkin’ to, I’m sure. 

3: Audrey Hepburn is fabulous.

The tv is on in the background. Saturday Night Movie on PBS. I don’t know what it is but I saw Audrey and stopped. I will watch anything with her in it. She’s just a pleasant presence in the room. I wonder what she was like in person. I know a few people that I just want to be in the room with. Kt and Bee were both like that, for sure. You just want to be there. Can spend hours with them and not even notice. TK, KS, GM and my running group all give that energy… It is as if time doesn’t exist in the same way when they’re around.

4: And you get an award… and you… and you…

Thursday was the Sports Awards at our school.  I’m generally not a fan of these things but know that sometimes they can mean the world to either kids or parents so I try to do my part. Had to do both Cross Country and Track.

MVP, Most Improved and Golden Ram.  It is good to see them smiling and bursting with pride when they come up to get their award. The most improved in track wasn’t there but he got his award the next day. He had run one race each meet, the 800, and nothing else. Focus! and he was a whole lot faster. After getting his award, at the last meet, he ran the 1600 as well and did pretty darned well.  Kids are pretty cool.

5: Run Run Run

Last weekend all my running buddies had other things going on. Big trail race (too big for my back), Mother’s Day too. So, I took the opportunity to go to Garland Ranch and put in a nice trail run. I ran up waterfall trail and behold! There was water in the falls! Then I ran up to the Wedding tree. I had not been there in a while. It is looking quite healthy this year. I couldn’t even get to the base for a proper photo. Too many pokey plants. The pond at the mesa was full and mirrorlike. Then I ran up Snively’s ridge and down the other side. Flowers were blooming. Everything is green. The sky was clear and I could see for miles. There were more people than usual on the upper trails. Good to see people getting out. Here are some photos. 8 miles. 2000’ elevation. Got a coffee at The Beerded Bean afterwards. Tasty. The chocolate croissant? meh. Thought about Jeffrey’s next door. That’s where we had our wedding breakfast way back when. If we had a favorite place to eat… I guess it might just be Jeffrey’s.

Here are some photos from the run

Waterfall

Wedding tree

The pond

Snively’s Ridge

The pond from above