Johann gives thanks

• Family first, obviously. My wife, my sons, my parents, my siblings and their spouses and kids, my in-laws, and all the family out west that I love dearly and miss terribly.
• My health. I bitch and moan a lot about eye anomalies, bad knees, migraines, shit like that, but there are a lot of people out there that have far worse problems than I, so I am really pretty lucky.
• That I live in a country protected by the greatest fighting force in the world, the United States Armed Forces. God bless ALL military personnel, past, present, and future; active, reserve, or retired; living or dead. You are what keeps America free.
• My Facebook friends. As full of goddamned suck as it is, were it not for the new Evil Empire™ that is Facebook, there are a lot of people with whom I would not be in contact today. Some of you I’ve only recently met, some of you go back many, many years and share a special/deep/sordid/otherwise significant past with me. Many of you I don’t see nearly often enough, some not at all. You all are special to me- perhaps in different ways and for different reasons, but special none the less.
• My Twitter friends. Some are also Facebook friends, but on the whole, the Twitter folk are simply a different breed. I’ve been fortunate to meet quite a few of you, some of you I am still waiting [im]patiently to meet, but you all keep me very much informed, entertained, and honored to have made your acquaintances. You guys are amazing. I’d love to make and post a list of all of you that have enriched my life, but I’m afraid I’d accidentally omit someone, and doing so would do that person a serious injustice. Hopefully, you know who you are.
• The fact that I will not be doing anything even remotely connected with Black Friday. All them fools getting up at the crack of last week to go shopping all night and day and night tomorrow can do it without me.
• Finally discovering sushi.
• Getting to go watch my dad and my brother-in-law referee their very first state finals football game tomorrow at Memorial Stadium in Champaign.
• Beef, seafood, chocolate, pizza, roasted Brussels sprouts, artichokes, asparagus, almonds, Diet Pepsi, the aforementioned sushi, and beer. Especially beer. There are other foods I enjoy but these are the big ones. Especially beer.
• Music. Without it life would be 1,000,000,000 times the suck it is now.
• Teachers, policemen, firemen, and anyone else who risk their lives and/or mold the minds of our children, and do it for, relatively speaking, damn near free, but because they LOVE DOING IT. Mr. Curry, Ms. Wickham, and Mrs. Stearns, I’m looking at you three specifically.
• My dogs. My stupid, always hungry, stinky, shedding, slobbering, shitting all over my back yard, barking at that which isn’t there, lying around doing nothing all day dogs, without whom I’d be miserable.

I’m sure there’s much more for which I am thankful- maybe I can add more as they come to me- we’re hosting Thanksgiving, and the house ain’t gonna clean itself. If you read this, have a moment, and feel so inclined, leave a note about something or someone you are thankful to have in your life. Be safe. Be happy.

And goddamnit, be nice to each other.

Happy Thanksgiving. Peace.

As you, the seven people that have visited here the last few months, know, Ian spent much of the fall running on his school’s cross-country team. And doing very well, I might add.

More than his running ability, the fact that he’s been running at all has sort of lit a fire under my large jelly-roll ass to get up off the couch once in a while and do something a little… I don’t know… fitnessy. So since early September, I’ve gotten out and attempted to run 3, sometimes 4 days a week.

I usually don’t get real far before I’m winded, and not much farther past that before I need to stop and walk a ways. Once I start walking, I get shin splints so friggin’ bad that it actually feels better to start jogging again. But hey, I’m making an effort, right? My main problem, though, is that I walk almost as fast as I “jog”. Having bad knees and being out of shape isn’t conducive to good running. But I’m trying. I’ve even gone running “with” Ian a few times, though that usually amounts to Ian running the course and standing around waiting 15-20 minutes for me to finish.

Anyway… as many of you probably don’t know, long before Ian joined the cross-country team, it has been kind of a “goal” of mine to run in a 5K race. I have no illusions of winning, I don’t want to try to get a time that will set the world on fire, I have just always wanted to run one to see if I could. Just to finish it. One of those “as I look back on my life…” things, really.

I have a friend, Gina, that recently ran the Milwaukee marathon a few weeks ago, so I asked her to meet with me over lunch one day so that I could pick her brain about how to ready myself for a 5K. (Marathons are not even on my horizon at this point.) After discussing things with Gina for a while, she basically suggested I just pick a race, enter it, and run it. She gave me a couple suggestions for training regimens and gave me a couple of websites for finding races, and- long story short- I found the home page for the Jingle Bell Run for Arthritis.

A nationally conducted race, the JBR raises money for the Arthritis Foundation. There happened to be one in Springfield, starting on the campus of Lincoln Land Community College, so I showed the Springfield-specific page to Dawn with a “Can I? Can I? Please? Please? Can I? Huh? Huh?” puppy-dog face, and she said, “I won’t run it, but I’ll do it with you”, then we showed it to Ian, and he said he would run it, so we signed up for it and Team Stearns was born. We fairly quickly raised our goal of donations and suddenly became the 5th highest fund-raising team. Not too shabby for a team of three people.

As the days leading up to the race came and went, I started getting more and more uptight about running it. I think I was getting hung up on the term “race”. It is a race in that trophies are given to the top finishers in several age categories for men, women, and children, but entrants can also just run or even walk in it for exercise, for the cause, or just for fun. This past week, I was really out of sorts. My stomach got progressively knotted up as the week went by, and this past Friday, the night before the race, I didn’t sleep well at all.

Yesterday morning was the race. I got up, got ready, and bolted out of the house without bothering to eat any breakfast. Probably not a good move. We get to LLCC at 8:00am when registration began, and wound up being purt’near the only people there for about 40 minutes. People started trickling in, until there wound up being at least a couple hundred runners and walkers there for the 10:00 start.

Ian took me outside a couple times while we were waiting to do some warmup calisthenics that his cross-country team does. Those calisthenics reminded me not only how out of shape I am, but also how uncoordinated I am. He has an exercise they call “karaoke”, for whatever reason, that damn near dumped me on my ass. Later, I found a couple of my Twitter friends, @mrsshoo and @kristiface80, that were also running the race, and chatted with them for a few minutes.

Finally, the call came to go outside and get lined up for the start. I was rather struck at just how many people were in the race when I saw the enormous crowd of people ahead of me. I remember thinking, I am SO out of my league. Soon, the race kicked off, and Dawn started walking and Ian and I started running. Within, literally, about six, maybe eight seconds, Ian was out of sight.

Did I mention he runs a whole lot faster than I?

I found a comfortable (that’s relative) pace, albeit rather slow, and settled in. We turned out of the campus and headed south onto Shepherd Road. The course took us into the Island Bay neighborhood along the lake, wound through there a little bit to the 2.5K mark, at which there was a water station and the turnaround point at which we went back the way we came.

So I’m running, and not feeling too terribly badly (again, that’s relative), doing my best to navigate the uneven surface of the roads, which were also littered with ankle-snapping sweet gum balls. As we turned onto the street that headed through the woods toward the turnaround and the water station, I remember thinking, it’s around this next bend. (No turnaround.) Okay, it’s gotta be around THIS bend. (No turnaround.) Ian high-fives me as he passes me on his way back, so I’m thinking, it’s GOTTA be this next bend. Still no friggin’ turnaround. Now, I’m starting to hit panic mode, thinking that I’m not going to even be able to make the halfway point before I have to start walking.

Finally, after two or three more bends in the road, I spot the water station. That was enough to get me around that post and start heading back. I take my water (like I was going to pass that up!), gulp it down, chuck the cup into the garbage, and decide, okay, I’ve got to walk for a little bit. I glance down at my iPhone and it shows I’ve gone 2.7 km, so I rationalize that since I made half the race in one shot, I can start walking. Right away, here come the shin splints, and they’re hurting. BADLY. Within about 3 minutes, I pass Dawn, who walked the whole way- which really kind of shows just how slow I run. I keep forging on, trying my best to ignore the shin splints. I wind back through the neighborhood, hit the main road that turns back into Shepherd Road, and start running again at the 3.7 km mark.

Shortly, I can see the stoplight at which we turn back into the campus, and the shin splints are at a much more manageable level, so I put my head down and just keep on keepin’ on, as the cheesy saying goes. I continue to play leap frog with the same 8-10 people I’ve been passing and getting passed by for the whole race, and suddenly I’m at the entrance into the parking lot.

It felt SO good to make that right turn onto the parking lot drive. Realizing I had just a short distance to the finish line- which I could SEE- gave me the drive to push through the exhaustion that was setting in. As I got closer, I spotted Ian. I moved over to the median where he was standing, and was met with a high-five and a “Come on, Dad, you’re almost there, you can do it!”. That gave me just enough energy boost to round the final curve and cross the finish line.

The rush I got crossing the line- running- was intense. I didn’t run the whole way, but I ran 4 of the 5km, and crossed the line running. That’s what I wanted. I got through the chute and found Ian, and he gave me a giant hug- in front of everyone!- and told me how proud he was of me. That right there was huge. It was all I could do not to cry. Within about 10 minutes or so, we spot Dawn walking her way toward the finish line so we cheer her on, and she crosses.

Ian ran the entire race in roughly 25 and a half minutes. He said he didn’t see his exact time, and also said that he wished he would have gotten the bib and chip that somehow got reserved for him, as he could have been in the running for an award in his age group. Before the race, when we discovered there was a bib and chip assigned to him, we told him to go ahead and get them, but he said, “Nah, I’m just going to run it for fun”. Then once he discovered that he would likely have gotten third place in his age group, he was regretting that decision. But, hey, live and learn. Next time, he said.

I finished with a time of 45:46, jogging 4 out of 5km, so I was ecstatic. The only time goal I really had was to make it under an hour, and I did that. Far as I’m concerned, I won. Dawn finished up her walk at about 55:50, and we went to the college cafeteria for the “after party”, where we were treated to water and Gatorade, Olive Garden salad and spaghetti (I despise Olive Garden with the fury of a thousand demons, but it was free, so I ate it), bananas, and quite possibly the best tasting oranges I’ve ever had. Terrific experience all the way around, and I can’t wait to do my next 5K.

I owe some thanks to a lot of people. First to Dawn, for allowing me to enter the JBR, and for her and Ian agreeing to do it with me. Next, to the good people at UnderArmour. That stuff rocks. I have a compression outfit and a fitted outfit to wear over it and, chilly and windy as it was during the race, I was plenty warm. Next, to so many of my friends on Twitter and Facebook for support leading up to the race, and also during and after the race. Your support, cheering, and well-wishes meant a lot to me. I owe a HUGE thanks to Gina, for all the advice, support, inspiration, and encouragement she gave me, and continues to give me. One of these days, Gina, you and I are going to run together!

Lastly, and most importantly, I have to thank Ian. His being in cross-country, and being so good at it, is what made me decide to attempt a 5K in the first place. I likely never would have entered, at least definitely not this soon, had he not gotten so into cross-country. He continues to offer support and says he would “keep training me” if it would help me. So I’m going to let him. He told me he hopes one day we can actually run a 5K or something, “not so much with each other as against each other”. To me, that’s awesome. He knows I’ll likely never be able to catch him, let alone beat him, but to have him give me encouragement to want to TRY to beat him means so much to me.

I really intend for the JBR to be the first of many 5K races in which I run, and hopefully I can get to where I can run entire 5Ks, move up to 10Ks, and, perhaps some day, maybe even enter a half or a full marathon.

SOME day.

Right now, I’m still chomping ibuprofen like they were M&Ms.

Now that that has been cleared up… yesterday was the City XC meet. A very, VERY significant meet pitting Lincoln against Grant, Franklin, and Washington, with sectionals roster spots on the line. Ian went into the meet ranked 9th on his team. Dawn told him to run this race as though it were his last because, if he doesn’t make the sectionals roster, it would be. Jeez, honey… no pressure!

So Adam and I pulled up to the park right about the time the boys’ race was starting. We cheered on the guys as they came around the ball field, then as they came back around and headed towards the woods and down the hill. Adam and I found Dawn and went and staked claim at the finish line. In the mean time, I asked how the girls’ race went. Turns out Marissa, the 8th grade speedster and captain of Lincoln’s team, won the race. Carrie, my neighbor’s daughter, finished 19th.

Anyway, here come the boys, chugging down the stretch toward the chute and finish line. Ian comes toward us, and we’re cheering, and he says, “I started too fast!” as he went by us. Apparently he got a little too quick of a jump. But he said he still ran the whole way. He’s figured out that if he picks a kid ahead of him and at least stays with him, if not pass him, that helps him keep pace. He finished in 37th place (don’t know how many kids) with a time of 15:36, another personal best by about 12 seconds. Sweeeeeeet!

We stayed for the awards ceremony. They gave medals to the top 20 finishers in both races. In both the boys’ and the girls’ race, Franklin runners placed about 15 kids, so they naturally won the meet. But your Lincoln Magnet School Leopards took second place!!

Coach O said she would post the information, along with the sectionals roster, at some point in the evening last night. I finally got off the computer at 11:46pm and they still weren’t posted, so I left a note for Ian in his bathroom to check as soon as he got up, and that if it still wasn’t posted, to plan as though he made the sectionals roster so he’d be ready for practice in case he actually did make it. When I woke up this morning, I came in and checked and he still had the page up– he made the sectionals team as first alternate (ranked 8th on his team)!!! He said that Coach said yesterday that it’s been a while since the last time they haven’t used at least one alternate, for what that’s worth. And what that’s worth, I have no idea.

Whether or not he made sectionals, I am insanely proud of how he did, but even more so that he did make the sectionals roster. So he’ll practice with the “big boys” and the other two alternates this week and they’ll head to East St. Louis this Saturday for the sectionals meet. I’m already nervous for him, but I don’t dare tell him that. Other than fretting over a course being “too flat” to suit him, he doesn’t seem to really get the butterflies before a race, so I don’t want to be the one to give them to him.

When I first got to the J’ville Community Park, right around noon, it was already crazy. Apparently, this invitational is an all-day thing. High school XC teams were running races as I pulled up. Saw Springfield High, but didn’t notice any other city schools in attendance. I have to assume that SHG doesn’t have a cross-country team because all of their athletics money is tied up in buying football players.

So I scout out the course while I’m waiting for Ian’s bus to arrive. It’s a very flat park, much like Rotary Park, the site of Ian’s very first meet this season, except way more {full-grown} trees. The start-finish line was almost in the center of the park. Runners headed outward toward the perimeter of the park, ran around the ferris wheel (I’m ashamed to admit that I never actually saw any ferris wheel), then all the way around the perimeter and back into the center of the park, in the opposite direction in which they started, to the finish line and chute. Kind of a problem, though, in that unless you’re looking for the lines indicating the course, you can inadvertently walk right through the center of the race. Especially problematic when you consider that it was nearly impossible to tell who was practicing and who was actually running the race in progress.

I’ll have you know that I didn’t get “GET OFF THE COURSE!” yelled at me once, thank you very much.

Ian’s team bus arrived somewhere around 12:20 or so (their meet started at 2:00), so I got with them and just sort of hung out. I showed the kids where the bathroom was, tossed out a few “Guys, settle down!” at the ones that were playing grab-ass and what not, and just sort of pretended I was supposed to be there. The kids got their tags eventually, and time was ticking down toward the start of their races.

The 5th, 6th, and 7th grade girls ran at 2:00, followed by the 5th, 6th, & 7th grade boys at 2:30, then the 8th grade girls at 3:00, and the 8th grade boys at 3:30. Times and team rankings didn’t appear to be a factor so much as their years in school.

Around 1:15 or so, Ian decided he needed a hot dog. So we went to the concession stand, and while we were there, my dad made it to the park, and we met up with him. After snarfing his hot dog, Ian and his teammates went to walk the course, so Dad and I chitchatted for a while.

The girls’ race finished up, and a few minutes later, the boys were off and running. Ian passed by Dad and me a couple times, and he was looking very good. The finish was great- it seemed like every single kid really turned on the Flux capacitors once they got within about 200 yards of the chute. In a little while, here comes Ian. He passed a couple kids on his way in, and almost caught one of his teammates, en route to a 14:35 finish.

14:35!!!!!

It’s an unofficial time (natch), but he finished something like 97th, and again, no idea how many kids were in his race. They haven’t even posted the official times from Thursday’s meet yet. Ian’s not really “accepting” 14:35 as “official”, since he and quite a few other kids said they believe the course wasn’t [close to] a full two miles. Ian’s comment: “It couldn’t have been two miles- I wasn’t even tired at the end of this race.” I told Ian that, if they indicate exactly how long the course was, we can figure what his two-mile time would have been, but if they don’t, we have no choice but to assume it was two miles and go with it.

Either way, two miles or not, skewed time or not, I was very impressed with how well he did. He had said several times yesterday that he “knows he’s not going to beat his best time because he hates flat courses”, but he did a pretty good job of kicking this flat course’s ass, two miles or not two miles.

Next meet is tomorrow at Lincoln Park, and then sectionals in East St. Louis on Saturday the 8th. I’m trying not to get too excited about the possibility of Ian making the sectional team, even if as an alternate, mainly because I don’t want to be responsible for him being crushed if he doesn’t wind up making it, but things are really starting to look promising, with the way he’s run in the last 2-3 meets.

My mom and dad attended this meet. With my dad being an official, he’s got football and/or baseball games just about every night, so he never has a chance to go. But yesterday, his game wasn’t until later in the evening, so he jumped at the chance to come see Ian run.

Only problem was, the bus from Decatur was late, so the start time of the meet got pushed back to 4:00 instead of 3:30. That was great for me, as Adam and I were able to arrive just after the girls’ race started. Bad for my dad, as he had to leave by 4:30 to get to his game, and as it turned out, that was minutes before the boys’ race started. Figures- the one chance he gets to go and the start time gets pushed back. Had the meet started on time, he likely would have gotten to see the end of Ian’s race.

Poopy.

Rewind to 2:30. I was in the shower, and Dawn got a call from Ian saying that he had hurt his back picking up the 87 lbs of school shizznit that he has to carry (backpack, binder, computer bag, trumpet case… poor kid looks like a Sherpa every day), and said that he didn’t know if he was going to run. Yikes- our first injury situation, and it didn’t happen on the course- or even while running period.

So Dawn gets to the park and finds Ian. She pumped him full of drugs She gave him an ibuprofen and some water and kind of rubbed his back a little. She never HeyTelled me saying he wasn’t running, so as soon as Adam got off the bus, we dashed up to the park. Ian found me and came up and gave me a hug (something I thought was very strange, considering that at his first meet he gave me the “Not in front of the guys” speech). I asked him how he was feeling and he said, “Better now.”

Apparently Dawn still has the Mother’s Touch™.

Anyway, Ian’s race gets going, and through much of the early going, he looked about like he always does, running well and in the front half of the middle of the pack, if that makes sense.

Around the ball field, into the woods, back up around the east side of the park, blah blah blah. Leaders start coming in, blah blah blah. Waiting for Ian to make his waydown the stretch into the chute, blah blah blah.

Hey, I’m not a writer; I only have so many ways of describing a race.

Soon, here comes Ian around the ball field, with a couple kids in front and a couple behind. He crossed the finish line with yet another personal best, this one bein 15:48 [by my stopwatch], another six [unofficial] seconds off his best time. He finished 50th (again, I have no idea how many kids ran, since the updated information is still not posted on Coach O’s web page, presumably because she was not at the meet), but I have been within a second of Ian’s official time at every race so far, so I’m going to go with 15:48 until I see any different.

Next meet is tomorrow afternoon, an invitational in Jacksonville. I read on the school website that the sectional team will consist of seven runners and three alternates. We learned at the beginning of the week that, coming into yesterday’s meet, Ian is ranked tenth on his team, so if he at least doesn’t fall any positions, he stands a fairly good chance of making the sectional team at least as an alternate.

Holy crapoli- my boy’s a runner. Who knew?! He sure doesn’t get that from me. I’m not questioning it, though- he’s good at it and enjoys it.

Oh- and did I mention he was chosen as one of the Students of the Month for September? #overflowingwithpride

Ah, if only they were so warm to each other the other 23:58 of the day.

Anyway, after the herd went past, we crossed the course and met up with Dawn, who was with Coach O at the finish line. My friend Kelly, who happens to be one of Ian’s assistant principals, was also there, so as we waited for the pack to start coming down the chute, we chatted about raising our kids, who has the ugliest running gait, and Nutella.

Mmmmm… Nutella.

Shortly, the kids started coming around the ball field that final time on the way to the finish line. I think the first kid finished in the 11:00 range, and every couple of seconds, another kid would cross- sometimes two or three would make the mad dash to see who would finish first and who would come dangerously close to impaling themselves on the rebar that marks the finish line. Hey, the final chute is only about two and a half feet wide, and it makes me nervous when two or three kids all try to finish at once. So a couple minutes later, I see Ian coming down the chute with a couple kids ahead and a couple kids behind, so we’re all cheering him to kick it in gear, which he did, and finished #65 (again, no idea how many kids were in his race, and no way to guesstimate since I wasn’t there to see the start) with a time of…

15:54!!!

That’s right, another personal best, this time shaving 32 seconds of his previous best. He’s close to having shaved four minutes off of his qualifying time in a month. In this writer’s mind, that’s outstanding. And I think he’s starting to really get the taste of blood now- he said to me that he’s got to drop another [approximately] 1:30 off of his time to be able to go to sectionals, so it seems he’s really getting goal-oriented with this running thing. Soooooo, we’ll see what we’ll see in the couple weeks here before sectionals. Next meet is next Thursday. Talk to all y’all then!

There were [I'm guessing] in the neighborhood of 15-20 schools represented at this meet, including Grant, Glenwood, and St. Agnes/Blessed Sacrament from the Springfield area. It’s at a nice little community on the Franklin-Waverly Lake, tucked in just north of Rte. 104. I dropped Ian off at school around 7:15am or so and then headed out there. I think I was literally the first one there.

Anyway, yesterday’s meet was a flighted meet. What that means is that each team ranks their runners from 1-7, and all the #1-ranked runners race each other (separated by gender), all the #2-ranked runners race each other, etc. All other runners not ranked 1-7 race each other in what’s called the 8th Man (or 8th Girl) flight. As it turned out, Ian’s race (the 8th Man) was the very first race of the day.

Long and the short of it- I know it takes me a month to tell a seven-minute story- Ian finished fairly strong. He had a time of 17:02- not his best, but still a good time. He finished in 124th position, out of somewhere in the neighborhood of 250-300 runners (again, a guess- I was way off last time I hazarded a guess). He said he had trouble because in some parts of the course, the path is slanted, and he isn’t used to running on that type of terrain. No excuses, he said, and he was happy with his time, as was I.

We watched a couple other races, and then just as we were getting ready to leave, Coach O asked if I could stay to help her time the rest of the races, as they were starting about 10 minutes apart, and it was very hard for her to get the finish time of one and then make it to the start line for the next. So I was happy (nay, honored- I’m a dork) to help out. Ian wasn’t necessarily thrilled about staying until the last chicken was plucked, but I had him help me count the runners as they came in, so he was a little better about spending the better part of the day out there. At one point, Coach O came up to me at the finish line and said, “How we doin’, Coach?” I felt all giddy. She called me “Coach”!!

Shut up. I admit I’m a dork.

All I can say is that the Glenwood team must train like absolute beasts. A runner from Glenwood won every single flight of which I saw the finish, which was just about all of them. I don’t know if they ran the table, but it would not surprise me in the least. At any rate, Ian’s best time of 16:26 (which is extremely relative, considering not all courses are exactly the same length, let alone exactly 2 miles) still stands, so his next goal is to try to beat the 16:00 mark. I’m thinking of having him run with ankle weights on when he runs in the neighborhood so that, once he gets down to his normal time with the weights on, he should be able to shave several seconds off his time once he takes them off. He’s not real “into” the idea of running with ankle weights on, but I’ll try to see what I can do to convince him.

Next meet is this coming Thursday at Lincoln Park. His best time there is 16:47, so hopefully he’ll at least break that, if not his personal best of 16:26. I’m probably going to miss the next two meets. They’re on the next two Thursdays (Dawn’s day off), and since she has only gotten to see him run once, I’m going to send her to the meets and I’ll stay back to get Adam off the bus, and then try to see if I can zoom up to the park in time to catch the end of Ian’s race. So I’ll be reporting on those two meets likely second-hand. Anyway, since the next meet isn’t until Thursday, that’s another 4-5 days of respite for you readers, and then an entire week after that!!

Today’s meet was at Lincoln Park, hosted by LMS. There were several schools there, including Grant, Washington, Jefferson, Little Flower, Springfield Christian, Christ the King, and perhaps one or two others. It was quite a bit warmer today than it was the last two meets, but there was at least a reasonably decent breeze. And it also wasn’t that oppressive 100˚ crap we had just a couple weeks ago.

Last night, as Ian and I (mostly Ian) were running around the neighborhood, I met up with him on his third lap around the block. He was walking, and said he “heard and felt a pop” in his stomach and now it hurts and he can’t run. Where he showed me it hurt, the first thing I thought was appendix, but he wouldn’t be able to even stand, let alone walk.

So we walk back home, and Dawn and I bombard him with questions and prod his abdomen. We decided his hip joint probably just popped a little, and also that he wasn’t properly hydrated. He took it easy the rest of the night, and said this morning that he felt better. Then at the meet today, while the girls were running, he said that his stomach was starting to bother him again, so I told him that if he needed to, to pace himself and save enough energy for the chute. Right before his race, I checked on him again and he said he felt fine again, but I reiterated the “pace yourself” speech.

His race started, and as he rounded the baseball field he looked like he was running fairly strong. I didn’t think he was running as fast as [I thought] he usually does, but he looked strong. So he comes around the back side of the ball field, heading into the woods, and he still looked strong, so I stopped worrying.

Um… as much.

A few minutes later, here comes the pack around the baseball field again and into the chute. Shortly after that, here comes Ian- again, looking strong- with a kid from a different school closing fast. My shouts of support changed quickly from, “Looking good, Ian!” and “Finish strong, Ian!” to “He’s catching up to you, Ian!!”, to which he responded by opening his eyes as wide as turkey platters (Coach O said, “I love the crazy eyes!”) and absolutely opening it up.

He wound up finishing with a 16:41, a fantastic time. Not as good as his personal best of 16:26 from Saturday, but he did beat his best time for that course (17:03). So he beat his best, but he didn’t. Either way, he ran a very good race. He finished 50th, out of around 100 kids in his race. I say “around 100″ because I heard several numbers between 94 and 105. So he either finished just in the top half or just out of the top half, depending on how many kids were actually in the race.

Next race is Saturday, so you Twitterers and Facebookers that I force to read about his meets will have a few days’ respite. Saturday is an invitational flight meet in Franklin, IL. Probably won’t be nearly the amount of teams there that there were in Normal Saturday, but still should be fun.

Yesterday there was a big invitational meet at Maxwell Park in Normal. Great park, nice and wide open, and more or less flat, save for a small and short uphill run at the start line (well planned, course layer outers, well planned). There were at least 20 schools, if not upward of 30 or possibly closer to 40, at this meet. Lots and lots of runners. There was a team from East Peoria there that had personalized warmups and nice- REALLY nice- matching gear bags. Someone has a lot of PTO money. Quite impressive. Glenwood Middle School (Chatham) and Grant Middle School (Springfield) were also in attendance. If any other city or area schools were there, I didn’t consciously notice them. There was a BUNCH of kids there. According to Ian’s coach after the meet, there were about 1700 total runners. I estimated possibly 500. I was WAY off.

Anyhow, it was a beautiful day for a cross-country meet. The girls’ “varsity” teams (the seven best runners on each team) ran first, followed by the boys’ varsity, the girls’ open race (everyone else not on varsity), and then the boys’ open race. Ian was somewhat hopeful he might make the varsity for this meet, but he was in the open.

This course, according to several people we talked to, is somewhat known for personal bests. Apparently, a lot of kids tend to do well at Maxwell Park. Ian said prior to his race that he feels like he does better on fairly hilly courses, like his home park of Lincoln, and since this course really wasn’t very hilly, he said he doesn’t think he’ll have a “great” race time, but still hoped to beat his personal best of 17:03.

When Ian’s race started, I swear I thought I was having a heart attack. My heart instantly started racing (pardon the pun), my stomach started churning, my mouth went dry, and I was breathing incredibly hard. You’d have thought I was running this damned race. I was antsy right from the start. Couldn’t stand still. So anyway, the race started, I turned on the stopwatch, and Dawn and I staked a claim along the chute to watch the finish. Within about 11 minutes or so, the first wave of kids came down the final stretch. Of course, the place is going nuts.

We’re watching for LMS kids- the kids had to wear their numbers up high on their shirts, so we could not read the “LEOPARDS” that is printed on their jerseys. We had to look for the gold leopard’s head on their shorts to distinguish them from other black uniforms. So I spot a leopard head, and it was J.D., their usual leader. A little while later, the unmistakable thick blond mane worn by Will came into view as he came up the chute. Then, the pack got thicker and thicker, and it became harder and harder to make figures out, let alone to identify anyone. All of a sudden, I spotted Ian’s face as he was attempting to make a move on our side. So I slap Dawn a thousand times on the arm, saying “Here comes Ian! There’s Ian!”. I think I may have bruised her. Sorry, Honey. I grab the stopwatch (didn’t look at it), he runs past us as we are ska-reaming our support for him, and as he crosses the finish, I hit the button on the stopwatch. Dawn says, “Is that a personal best??” I looked at the stopwatch and about pooped.

16:27.

He knocked more than 30 seconds off his best time- again! He’s gone from a team qualifying time of 19:38 to 18:32 to 17:06 to 16:27, in the span of sixteen days. According to Coach O’s report on her website, Ian’s unofficial time was 16:26. Hopefully they’ll have the official results up soon and I can update this post. I don’t know in what place he finished, nor do I know how many kids ran in his race, but he again knocked the crap out of his personal best by 37 [unofficial] seconds. I reiterated on the way home that it’s going to be even harder still to beat his personal best- naturally, the lower his time, the harder it becomes to beat- and that he can’t be discouraged if he doesn’t beat his best every time, but he seems to seriously have the drive to work at it.

I truly believe he has really found his niche, sports-wise. He still wants to play baseball, and still enjoys it- in fact, he even asked if we’d be “mad if, at some point whether in middle school or high school, he tried out for baseball and didn’t do cross-country, and then went back to it [XC] the next year”. I told him of course we would not be mad, not in the least. I did say that if he wants to do that, I think his freshman year in high school would be the best (or, at least in my mind, the most logical) time to attempt that, but I didn’t tell him that I really kind of hope he sticks with cross-country, as much as I cringe to hear myself say that.

I’m a baseball guy. I played little league baseball for nine years, I was the “manager” (i.e., scorekeeper) for the junior varsity team in high school (I wasn’t nearly good enough to attempt to make the team as a player), I umpired baseball for a few years, and, of course, I coach Ian’s summer team. I love baseball and would love nothing more for my son to play baseball for as long as he enjoys it. But here’s the thing- after less than three weeks of watching him run cross-country and seeing not only how legitimately good at it he is and how much positive effect it has on him, I believe I can honestly say that I would be perfectly at peace if he gave up baseball to focus solely on cross-country.

I never thought I’d get excited over watching kids run, let alone get SO excited that I would be okay with Ian never playing a single pitch of baseball again. I am not sure how he feels about it completely yet, but I genuinely believe- again, even only after three weeks- that his true calling in the realm of sports is to run cross-country. And it is so much FUN as a parent and spectator. Maybe it’s just because I coach him, but in baseball, I am so stressed the entire game. But with cross-country, I get an excitement that I just don’t get- or, perhaps, as yet haven’t gotten- with baseball.

Weird. But awesome. Keep it up, Ian.

Ian said that his coach wanted all runners to try to cut 20 seconds off their times. Twenty seconds… in a cross-country race, twenty seconds is a friggin’ eternity. Like I explained to Ian: picture yourself crossing the finish line. Now count to 20 and picture someone else crossing the finish line. That is a LOT of time. But hey, that’s what Coach wanted, so that’s what they were shooting for.

So I said that in the meet on Tuesday, Ian ran an 18:32, right? That was at Rotary Park, a very flat course. Yesterday, he had practice at Lincoln Park, which has a fairly sizable hill. He ran that course in 18:22. Well, I got to thinking (to myself) that if he knocks 10 seconds off his time from a flat course to one with a hill, maybe that twenty seconds isn’t so far-fetched.

I gave Dawn the choice today. I let her choose whether she wanted to go to the meet at the beginning, or whether she wanted to stay and get Adam off the bus and then come to the meet straight from the bus stop. She chose the latter, since she didn’t really see much of Adam this morning, as she got up early for an 8:00am massage and pedicure. Bad choice that wound up being; they ran the boys’ race first, for whatever reason. (Yeah, I’m guessing I’m in the doghouse for that one… but in my defense, I DID give her the choice.)

The boys get lined up on the northeast corner of the park, ran through the outfields of the softball fields, ran a full circle around the “big field”, and head south into the woods and down the hill toward the pond. Then they ran back up the hill along 5th St., back around through the softball field outfields (more or less where they started), and around the far side of the “big field” again, with the finish line being at the edge of the Nelson Center parking lot. (Those of you not familiar with Lincoln Park, it’s a good long two miles.)

Okay, remember that whole thing about the kids trying to shave 20 seconds off their times? That would mean Ian would have had to run the course in 18:02. Yeah, well, he did it in 17:03!!! An entire 1:19 quicker than his best time thus far. That was amazing. He wound up finishing 18th out of 40 kids in his race, so better than half. The kid that won the race was also from LMS; he ran it in 12:50.

The girls’ race was just as exciting. The girl that won Tuesday’s meet (by a large margin) won again today (by a large margin). She finished in 13:11, and neighbor girl Carrie finished 5th. The LMS girls took 12 of the top 20 finishes, and the LMS boys took 13 of the top 20 finishes in their race, and LMS very handily won the meet over Washington and Jefferson Middle Schools.

I have told Ian that, in knocking well over a minute off his time at once, it’s going to get harder and harder to get personal bests every time now, that it only gets harder and more intense from here. He seems ready and eager to take it on. This cross-country stuff is pretty damned cool.

Big, big meet in Normal on Saturday. Probably 20-30 schools will be competing. Hopefully I’ll get to go. Dawn’s sister has offered to take Adam (bookoo early) Saturday morning so we can follow the bus to the meet. We’ll see how that goes. But at any rate, it’s gonna be a pretty insane time up at Maxwell Park!! Wish Ian luck!