05.28.07
we’re not in Kansas anymore
I went to a wedding this week-end in Canada where I hung out with several members of my old UNC XC team - Dave’s gang. We were the only ones there with a kid so I spent most of my time taking care of Lizzie while the wedding party (Dave was a groomsman) partied; I had a lot of time to myself to think. I felt a little like Brock when he went back to visit his high school team in Wichita:
“As difficult as it can be to accept, people and teams change. Running in high school was great, but I think this year was the first that I actually realized that I had moved on ….”
In Canada, I was with my “old team” but I felt disconnected and out of sorts, wishing I was back in North Carolina with my “new team,” my CAC team. I was wondering how the work-outs were going and kept checking e-mail, workoutlog, and this blog to see how the troops were faring in my absence. Both the women and the men are heading out to BIG races on June 2nd …. Freihofer’s [international] run for women 5k for the gals and the up-and-coming Music City Distance Carnival in Nashville, TN for the men. I hated missing my current team’s work-outs and I felt superfluous at the wedding with my former team. I was the old coach - really no different than some auntie at table 7.
This is a natural feeling, as young Brock wisely acknowledges, but it is painful nonetheless. Growing up or away is never easy. All the athletes I coached before CAC will make me smarter with this set. All the coach/athlete relationships I formed in the past will make me better able to get to the heart of this crew.
Before the cake cutting, I left table number 7 to dash out for a quick $4.00 a minute cell phone call to Trish and Jason to see how the week-end 1,200m time trial went. That out-of-sorts feeling vanished as I listened to every detail of Jason’s 2:53.6. I’ll let him tell it … and maybe Trish will figure out how to post the video she took of it … but I just want to say: “there’s no place like home; there’s no place like home.”
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