Monster Mudfest

I feel like I haven't been updating this blog as much as I used to. I guess I'm just busy with school and whatnot. Hopefully it'll keep going.

Anyway, yesterday was the conference championship meet at home. Our course was extremely wet and muddy due to a week of rains, but that only made it about 10 times more fun. I was covered in dirt before we even got out of the first field. There were mud puddles several inches deep in some parts of the "runway" and the meadow was one long line of slush. Everybody got pretty dirty before it was over.

I was determined to stick with Jon and Fife this time, and I succesfully managed to do it. We ran as a pack of 3 for the first 2.5 miles or so, but then Jon had to drop back as we were following the west side of the meadow, along the road. He was right beside me when I suddenly heard him say "Ow" and he started slowing down. I tried to say something to encourage him to keep it up but he just couldn't fight it enough to stay with us. Fife and I ended up running together around the pond and through the woods (which had a second "pond" in the middle of one path and a couple inches of mud on the other) before he pulled away from me around the 4 mile mark. I managed to catch up again in the last 800 meters as I summoned the monster, but he barely stayed in front of me on the final stretch. I let out another war cry just before I crossed the finish, which caused several of the spectators to laugh. I'm glad they enjoyed my monster.

This is me near the finish. I was pretty angry.

It was pretty cold, so we all went into the field house for the awards presentation. There were a couple of glitches in the results, so we had to wait anxiously for our final scores. Guppy ended up winning on the women's side and Ash also took the men's crown, so we had two individual champions. The women's team also were conference champs, but the men were second to Edgewood. They beat us by only 3 points. Some of the guys have blamed themselves, but I don't think there's much of anything we could have done to improve our chances. We went out there, released our monsters and fought the best fight we could. We were half victorious, and the season isn't over yet. Regionals is in two weeks. I'm on the cheering squad this year, having placed 9th on the team at conference. I plan on losing my voice.