“Races are won when nobody is looking.” Coach Gummerson, our head cross country coach at Minooka, uses this phases to imply that even though it may not be a pressure situation you can always make yourself better. Overall, I felt that this was the theme going into our bye week. Even though there was no big race at the end of the week, it was an opportunity to improve as a team on different levels.
The last week was a hectic one academically for me and other members of our team. Projects and essays seemed to be the other theme for the week. Late nights of writing and drawing made it a little more difficult to focus. However, practice was a time to take a break from the classroom pressures and stay set on running better and being with my team.
Our workout load got slightly more difficult, but it was good to go a little faster and a little harder. We know Coach Gummerson has a plan and that he is not going to burn us out just because there was no meet on Saturday. The team is right back at it next week at Loyola and he made sure we were going to be ready for that.
Instead of a meet Saturday morning, the Minooka cross country team got up and ready at 6A.M. for a different reason. Coach Gummerson and our Park District planned a day where the team got the opportunity to run at the local golf course and afterwards do some community service around the parks. It was great to have a change in scenery running the golf course. It is an amazing place to get to run especially in the morning when the sun was just coming up and we had the place to ourselves. It is a hilly course which made it great for us to practice on. After our run on the cart paths, we loaded up the busses to get in some community service time. Our home course is on park district property and we are thankful to get the chance to run there. Volunteering to help maintain the parks is always a good way to say thank you. Our group of senior boys were put in charge of painting the picnic benches.. It was a lot of fun to be with the team doing something other than running. I’m glad we were given the opportunity to do it.
Next week we will be at the Loyola Lakefront Invite and I am really excited to get the chance to compete there again.