Au-gust it's my turn 20: Cross Country JOY!!!!

Today was cross country practice!! It was so joyous. And there were soo many  more kids today. 

I get so nervous for practice for some reason. All day I was so nervous. I had to keep telling myself that it's just like primary, except I don't have to keep the kids reverent and it's only for one hour and not two and I don't have to do the same exact thing twice. But then I think about how I don't always have much success in getting kids in primary to listen to me and I get nervous again. I just want the cross country kids to be inspired and become great runners and love running as much as I do, so it makes me nervous to think about actually doing that when there are 25 10 yr olds all chatting it up!

But it was still great! And good news (bad news, I thought at first) there was a high school cross country meet at Kiwanis! So i thought we wouldn't have any room to practice, but they didn't race till later. So we did a lap around kiwanis, which about destroyed half the kids and then we played capture the flag!

It was so funny. After we got demolished the first game, I told one little seemingly inconspicuous girl to go hide the flag under one of the cones the HS kids were using for their meet. It was perfect cus everyone else was distracted, until she yelled out, "No one look at me!!" haha so of course everyone did. 

It's ok, because then she had the great idea to make everyone believe she hid it in the tree even though it was in the cone haha. So soon our whole team is yelling at the top of their lungs so the other team is sure to hear, "EVERYONE, GUARD THE TREE!! IT'S IN THE TREE!" 

Which of course is the perfect cue for the other team to look everywhere but the tree haha. It was joyous!

Also, this girl caught a praying mantis!

So then it was also way more joyous than I expected when the high school kids started racing! So many pure and wonderful memories came back to me! I honestly have spent so long in the not competitive running world that I forgot how much I loved cross country with all my soul. It was so fun. It was so thrilling to see all the girls running in a line and knowing exactly what they were thinking, and it was awesome to hear their coaches yell the exact same things my coaches would yell at me in the 3 seconds they had as we ran by. It was such sweet nostalgia. I was so excited for you, Seeg. How fun and joyous!

Maybe you can't see them, but there is a line of runners on the other side of the park. Cross country bliss!

It was a great day at the park. I love cross country! Also, primary on weekdays!