September 15, 1979 (Saturday)

From running log:
Ran about 4.5 miles at 6:50 pace on the grass around Warner Park in Madison, Wisconsin. Cool, breezy, 70F. Ran after going to the Wisconsin Badger football game with Aunt Chris. Chest cold getting worse, also sneezing. Kinda worried about that.

30 years later:
Madison is the city of my birth, and I still have many relatives there. My Aunt Chris, my father's sister, was my "other mom". I assume that many of us have someone like that in our lives. It takes nothing away from our own mothers, whom we love dearly and forever. But sometimes life is just enhanced by another loving adult in your world, someone who cares deeply about you but is not enmeshed in the natural dynamics of a nuclear family. Aunt Chris had helped babysit me when I was in infant and toddler. She was much more of a sports fan than my own mother, who had her hands full with my three younger sisters anyway. I would spend wonderful weekends with my Aunt Chris and her son David, who was like a little brother to me. We'd laugh, and talk, and play, and experiment with cooking. She still tells a funny story about me eating some ridiculous amount of food (I think it was something like 15 homemade tacos, plus ice cream for dessert) as a teenager. It's probably true, I was insatiable. On top of all of that, we'd attend football games at the University's Camp Randall Stadium.

If you are a fan of college football, you know that Wisconsin has had a fairly competitive team for the past 15 years or so, often qualifying for Bowl Games. Not so in the 1970s. They were pretty awful. But we took a kind of pride in cheering for them anyway. And they often had one or two outstanding players (Rufus Ferguson and Billy Marek come to mind), so there was often something to get excited about even if they were likely to get blown out again. There is some joy in rooting for the underdog.

Back to BHS cross country: we were underdogs ourselves. Okay, we'd won our home cross country meet against three other teams, one of which figured to be a main competitor at the conference championship race. But we all knew this was only the beginning. Perhaps we'd caught the Wisconsin Dells team napping a bit, maybe they didn't consider us to be real competition. From this point onward, they'd be more-prepared for us, so the trail ahead was certainly not going to get any easier. Still, we'd accomplished a strong first step, and we had a growing sense of confidence and commitment. Success can do that for you, as long as you don't assume that one win is all you need.