Ahhhhh Fall weather, are you ready for some... cross country?

Not what you were expecting huh?  Well I wasn't either, at least not about 5 years ago, but at some point this summer I found myself looking forward to cross country season.  Not for myself, but for Sampson.  You see we did the football thing when he was little and around 5th grade he decided he didn't want to play anymore.  Fine by me that was when all of the head stuff was starting to come out and it really didn't bother me that he didn't want to play even though I think he could have done well.  But I didn't know what would take its place.  Well he decided he would run cross country in 7th grade.  I think some of this came from him running a 5k at the end of basketball season as a 6th grader and he put up a time of 24 minutes, right out of the box.  Me not be experienced in the way of the 5k didn't know if this was good or not.  But after 5 years of racing if an 11/12 year old can run sub 25 with no training, that is pretty darn good.  He is now in the 18 minute range as a sophmore so I was getting excited as the season got closer to watch him run.  You see the great thing about cross country is that you can show up at race time, watch your kid race for about 20 minutes (the less they run the better) and when it is over you can leave if you want or stay and support the rest of the teams, for like another half hour or so.  Or you can go to a "team" sport, sit for 2 or 3 hours waiting to watch your kid play for 5 minutes and then spend the entire post game complaining that your kid should be playing more, but they have the wrong name or the coach is an idiot... but I digress. (I think I used that correctly...yep pretty sure I did)  In cross country you get what you get, if you are good you are in the top 5, if you aren't then you aren't.  There is always the possibility that one of the top guys will have a bad race, and if that happens you could sneak into the top 5, but for the most part it comes down to how well you can run.  Watching Sampson run when he was little, this really wasn't the sport I would have picked for him, but as it turns out I think he has an extremely good natural form for distance running.  Kind of funny how the sport found him, but he has done really well at it and he even met his goal of getting all conference already.  Well there is still a good bit of the season left and hopefully I'll be back on the blog and can tell you how they do.  Also if there is time I'll tell the tale of last years district meet and the cramping situation.  Oh it is a good story.