the cross country team

So I am co-coaching a cross country club at our elementary school. A friend asked at the beginning of the year if I wanted to coach it with her and I said sure, sounds fun. It has been fun but we thought we would have an easy time because how many elementary kids want to run cross country. Well, it was open to all grades and we ended up with 32 kids! It has been an exercise in patience at times. I have no idea how teachers get that many kids to listen to them at once. But it is a lot of fun to see the ones who are really excited about it (which unfortunately does not really include my child). So I'd always just assumed our kids would be runners but at this early stage it does not appear Terran will be following along with that. The kid can ride forever and speed on his bike, but not so with running. A few meters and he's too tired. Except maybe he'll be a sprinter - he starts out fast and then stops! Anyway, we had our first race on Monday evening. The younger kids do 1/2 mi, middle ones do 1 mi and a few older kids do 2 mi. Terran started out ahead and fast in the 1/2 mi. I was at the finish to cheer them on coming in. Everyone is streaming in, including the little kinders with legs half the length of Terran's, but no Terran. Finally he comes in last! Just behind someone else, but still. Tells me he got tired. Our assistant coach tells me later that he we jumping over and playing on all the jumps on the BMX course they were racing around. He didn't seem to really realize he had not stuck to the race course. Of course he was tired! Anyway, Michael will actually be at the next race since he's taking the day off as it's Terran's birthday and I want him to be at the race. One of us will be posted at the BMX course to remind him to stay on course. It's been disappointing to me that he doesn't love it, but when I think about it I didn't love distance running until I was over 20. I did love running fast and short though! Here are some of the kids on the team. The boy on the far right won the 2 mile race in a blazing fast time, like faster than I think I can run right now! He'll be the next Boulder distance star. Oh well, in the spring they have a track program, so perhaps Terran will like that better. And you might notice on the shirts that it's the Landsharks running club. That just makes me think of SNL.