August 18-19: Long Days, Long Nights, and Early Morning

The past couple of days have been extremely busy for me. It all started way back Monday night, when I got the wise idea of meeting the locals. In Buckland, where basketball is king, there is no better way to get in the mix of things than by stopping by open gym. I went to shoot around with the high schoolers at the 8:00-9:00pm gym session, then I decided to stay and play in the men's open gym night, which is from 9:00 to 11:00. My plan was to stay and play a few games. It was all going according to plan, I was in on the very first game by virtue of me sinking a free throw when we were picking teams. I was thinking to myself "this is great, I'll be out of here by 9:30." That idea was all good on paper, until my team just kept on winning, meaning we didn't have to get off the court. The next thing I knew, it was 10:40, and everyone was leaving, and the game turned into a 5-3 (we had the 3), so we finally lost. This is something I would regret come Tuesday.

Having promised one of my runners that I would get up in the morning and run with him at 6:30, I awoke, and made my way over to school, only to find that all of his running stuff was locked in the locker room, one that I didn't have a key to (As coach, I know have a key to that room, although I probably should've had it from the day I said I would coach the team). So I told L (can't use kids names for obvious reasons) that I am sorry, and then I went right back to bed for another hour.

All day Tuesday I was sore from the basketball the night before, as well as a bit of the running. The day felt a lot longer than Monday, and it was for two reasons; first, the school day was actually 2 hours longer (we didn't have an hour long assembly like we did Monday, and we didn't have the typical Monday early-release), and I split the cross country team up into grades 3-7, and 8-12. This meant that the little ones practiced at 4:00 and the big ones at 4:45, so by the time the kids were showered, it was 6:00 and time for planing. Because of all this, Tuesday was a blur. The only thing I remembered about Tuesday during school was that I had to teach P.E. for the first time ever, and it won't be the last time (my kids better like soccer!). But Tuesday, we just played a game the kids call Run Caribou Run, and kickball, they know the routines, I get to just sit back and relax.

After planning a few things, I was off to the high school open gym, to shoot around. This time I had the self control to step out at about 8:45 to do a little more planning. However, by 9:30, I was out, and by 10:00 I was fast asleep.

Another early morning for L, this time to use the weight room, and at 7:00, so I got a bit more sleep. While my runners were doing weights, I graded math pretests, and planned out my day. Again, now that I'm in the swing of things, I don't remember much about Wednesday pre-cross country.

Wednesday, was a "learning experience" as my Principal put it. I took my older runners on a road that was being used as a part of the sewer project. I didn't know that it was supposed to be kept off, and the project manager called our Principal, and had the custodian come out on the school Honda (ATV) and bring back all the runners. Feeling bad when I came back and confronted my Principal, she took all the blame, and said it was alright, and that since she hadn't told me I couldn't run there, that it wasn't my fault. This made me feel much better, although, I learned my lesson to not listen to 11th and 12th graders that tell me it is alright to go on to certain roads.

Anyways, that is the last few days in a nutshell, time just keeps flying by faster and faster.