aaaahhhh....

The title of this post is how I felt at about 1:30 yesterday. I had made it through hosting my first track meet--and it was a success. But it didn't come without some anxiety. We awoke Saturday morning to thunder pounding outside and heavy downpours. I immediately went to accuweather.com and checked the hourly forecast. It didn't look good, but it was too early to call. I went down to workout and take my mind off what I couldn't control. I rode the bike for 45 minutes. When I came up I checked the radar and watched the forecast on our local NBC station. It looked like we may have some clearing by 10am, just in time for the meet! After talking to one of the other coaches coming (the one with the biggest team), we decided to go for it--possibly delaying the start by 30 minutes.
Well, I felt the Heavens were truly smiling down on us. The storm stopped at about 9:50. People had arrived at the track and were warming up when I got there at 10. (I had come to make sure no one was there waiting at 9:30, and no one was, so I went home to help Eric with the boys). We had 35 kids participate. Each age group at 3-7 competitors, so it made for an exciting meet. We had the shot-put and broad-jump going on simultaneously with the track events, so we were able to complete 27 track races, 7 age-groups doing broad-jump, and 6 doing shot-put in 3 hours. It COULD NOT have happened without very willing parents and coaches helping out. I was a bit of a nervous wreck for the first 20 minutes or so. Eventually I looked down at the schedule and saw that everyone was where they needed to be and we were on track time-wise, and I was able to breathe a little easier ("little" being operative word).
Oh yes, and the megaphone was a big help. Also, the other team's coach brought walkie-talkies, which were life-savers for the 200 (which can be tricky since the start is on the opposite side of the track from the timers at the finish line).
Our team performed GREAT. We had several first-place finishes. We had a few athletes participate in EVERY EVENT, which I believe deserves recognition in and of itself. And I think they all had a great time, regardless of how they finished.
I am still waiting on pictures from our "meet photographer," a.k.a my bro-in-law Mark who is a pro-photographer (www.brookviewphotography.com). I'll post some when I get some.
We had perfect weather. It was overcast and about 60 degrees for most of the meet. It warmed up a little toward the end, but we had no rain. AND the sun didn't actually come out until just after the meet ended. I felt it was a real blessing. Several of the parents asked me at the end when we planned to host another meet--which I felt was the ultimate compliment. The parents on my team and the visiting team were so helpful, I think I may be up for having one more meet to close out the season!

On another note--I biked 50 minutes on Thursday, and ran my 6 mile route on Friday in 48:30. This week I'll be back to my normal hard day Wed. and long day Saturday. I did weights Wed and Friday. I worked it out to do the trail race on the 17th, so I am pretty stoked about that!!!