Cross Country Season

The season has officially ended.  I cannot believe it's over.  I was so scared when it started; I didn't feel worthy of coaching these kids and I was concerned I would not do them justice in our running.

Turned out the training was the easy part. The paper work was rediculous. Im going to miss the training like mad!  But I will not miss all that paperwork! Hahaha it's not done now, I have a few loose ends to tie up, but mostly it's done. 

Im going to MISS those kids!  What a close bunch of friends they are!  And they are SO sweet to me!

Yesterday was Provincials.  3 of our teams qualified to go; Intermediate and Senior Girls, Senior Boys. Our one Intermediate Boy qualified as an Independent runner at Regionals.  We took 28 kids and went off to Provincials.

The team was awfully nervous but they did the hard work and the hard training days and the long training runs in the cold rain and they deserved to be at Provincials, running with the best in the province :)

There were a lot of runners there; almost 700 for 6 divisions.  We had no junior runners so we watched and cheered for our local school.  Then the Intermediate girls ran :)

And they all did really well!  Scores were pretty close in team places 3-8.  We have some fast runners and many good runners :) and finished with a 6ths place finish and a team 8th :)  It was a decent start.

Intermediate boys; our boy was in 8th place (out of over 100) through half way but had an injury and finished (yes finished!) 22nd.  AMAZING. :) He limped out of the finish chute and iced right away and is better today :)

Senior Girls did really well!  Our top runner was 2nd with an amazing time and we had 2 more runners on her heels putting us in a good position; then there was a gap between our 3rd and our 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th runners....our tough point.  However our score was good enough to get the girls a 3rd place team finish and Bronze medals!  A total success! :):):) And only 2 points out of silver medals; margins are so close with that sort of competition but considering the large point values, 2 points is nothing!  Pass 2 more people....ugh but I was not sure what to expect and was THRILLED for the girls and their placings!  Everyone was so excited :)

Senior boys were up with a good chance of a win from our top boy :) He did not let us down, coming in with a strong first place.  He was quickly followed by 3 more of his teammates with the others close behind and amazingly (and somewhat unexpectedly) those boys took home silver medals!  :):):)

An amazing placing for our teams and a great end to a successful season.  I am so glad I did not hurt their chances of success LOL  And I already cannot wait until next year! I bet some of these runners will run through the winter with me.

I didn't expect to enjoy this so much!  Beyond the stress it was just FUN and exciting to be with runners and give advice that often challenged my knowledge as they had aches and pains I could not explain LOL  Cannot imagine how much Im going to miss seeing these kids all week LOL