On the field

Yesterday Nick Nack and I took Natalie -- along with her team -- to a cross-country competition an hour or so away.  I thought it would be good for her to be in an actual athletic competition, something she has avoided for her 10 odd years on the planet.  And it was good for her, as we shall see.

But first we had to deal with me.  When we got there, there was blaring music, there was blazing sun, there were tents for shade and really skinny cross-country looking kids jogging around getting ready, checking out the course.  And the kids were nervous, and I was like "oh man, my daughter's getting involved in a real competition here."  And she is not morphologically optimized for x-country, no lithe gazelle she.  Nor has she trained a ton (which I think is appropriate for a 10-year old).  But the prospect of her competing in the blazing sun got me stirred up, and I just wanted to keep her in the shade, hydrated.

So her coaches got her out on the course, running around, checking it out, and when I saw her and Isabel way out in front of the other kids I was like "slow down, girls!"  And then the race before hers all the kids, including Natalie, were running around cheering for their teammates, and I was afraid she was going to tire herself out.  And they took forever to get her race started, and I can't nudging her and Isabel over into the shade. And then at the starting line Nick Nack was leading the kids in "strides", sprinting out 50 yards before the race, and I ran over saying "what the hell is he doing?"

At this point in time, another of the coaches, one who had run on the Olympic 10k team in her prime (not all that far past) turned to me and said "Are you always critical of everything?  He's doing strides.  Why don't you just chill out, man?" And there were a few more sentences which I have forgotten or repressed, and I realized that I must have looked entirely like "one of those parents."  So I slunk away.

And then during the race I ran around the course and cheered.  Only I didn't really feel comfortable just cheering for Natalie or our kids, but I was totally feeling it for the really plump kids who were bringing up the rear, and I stuck around and hooted and hollered for them, and I realized that it was all about how shitty I felt on most athletic fields of endeavor back then, not because I was fat, but because I was scrawny and uncoordinated and was never top tier at anything, till I was 13 or so and started to break out on the track and the field as well.

And Natalie had a great attitude all day.  She ran almost a personal best in that nasty heat, though she wasn't toward the front of the pack, and she cheered for her team and when I encouraged her she stayed with me and cheered for fat kids we will probably never see again.  And in the evening, when she was talking to grandma and Rob on the phone with Mary, she kept saying "we've got to tell them about my race."  And then when the subject of it came around she said "Oh, it was just a race."