Cross country practice. 0.5 mile warmup, 3 workout (3.5 miles total). Grass LSD. Ran the home cross country course, but in reverse direction - screaming down Cardiac Hill. My legs are tight and tired from yesterday ... also from riding kid's tricycles in the Homecoming Parade today (being silly).
30 years later:
Homecoming is supposed to be a tradition in which alumni come back to a school for a celebration, usually involving attending a football game. But when you are a high school kid, homecoming is more like an occasion to goof off, dress funny, and beg your way into the annual parade. While the football team got all of the attention and glory, we cross country runners managed to get ourselves a spot in the parade. That spot consisted of a pickup truck and several borrowed tricycles. As the parade crept along, we would take turns riding (awkwardly) the trikes, and tossing candy to the kids in the audience. It was silly, it was a bit nerdy, it was harmless ... sort of like how the general population viewed runners anyway. Most of all, it was a good excuse to get out of school for the afternoon.
We also attended the football game that night. Now, not to throw stones, but the football team in 1979 was over-matched on the field. Football is a strong tradition in Wisconsin, and for whatever reason the other school's teams in the conference had better squads and better performances that year. I'm not even sure our guys won a single game. Does anyone remember? If so, please post a comment below. Still, we attended the home games, and cheered lustily. And, of course, other kinds of lust were in abundance, as high school football games represent the chance to flirt not only with girls from your school, but even to build up enough gumption to sneak over to the visiting team's bleachers and try to impress girls from (gasp!) the other school. I was embarrassingly awful at impressing girls, no matter what school they came from. So, for me, attending football games was generally a waste of time, with one exception: Being a teenage boy, I was keenly aware of the inter-school rivalries, and watching our football team lose was actually extra motivation for me to go out and thrash that same school's cross country runners in the next meet. Thus, the foibles of our footballers helped motivate me to extract my own little sip of vengeance out on the cross country course.
My memories of that day include a few additions (Names have been left out to protect the guilty):
ReplyDelete-During the week, the traditional float building was suspended when one of the seniors hit the Junior class president in the face during a raid on the Junior's float site.
-The senior class continuing to build their float anyway. (Thank goodness for "open campus!"
-The Football team's best running back was suspended for the game due to code violations.
-The HomeComing Pep-Fest.
-The greased pig with #23 painted on the side for the afformentioned running back slipped in to the pep fest, with the administration struggling to remove it.
-During the parade, the senior class float, a replica of "The Deathmobile" from Animal House was snuck in, when the truck carrying the CC team stopped to allow the float to pull in line
-As statistician for the football team, they were under the direction of first year coach Rick Osgood, who 30 years later, I saw in Vegas for the Badger-UNLV game!
-Unfortunately one of our classmates set the single season and career interception records that year!