Track & Field & A Mess of Crazy

Because I enjoy making my life more hectic and chock full of anxiety, I signed the boys up for track & field this year. Okay, okay, they wanted to sign up. But when I signed them up, I had no idea it was going to be as crazy as it currently is. I thought at least their practices would be together. Turns out that Jett's practice is on Monday & Wednesday from 4-5 and Cruise's practices are same days but from 5-6. Since there is no way I'm going to sit on the bleachers with a 2 year old for 2 hours twice a week, there is a lot of driving these days. But for the most part they enjoy it, so I guess I'll just suck it up and keep going.

Their first track meet was Monday. The coach told us to prepare for about 3 hours, so I tried to get a sitter for Miles but it turns out everyone else's lives are just as hectic as mine. So I brought Miles along and he was relatively well behaved. The problem really was that parents aren't allowed onto the field and the boys really had no idea where they were supposed to go and when. So I would run from one side of the fence to yell to them where their next event would be, and then run to the next side to tell them where to go next, all while keeping track of the toddler who was happily throwing rocks onto the track from behind the chainlink. I got a lot of dirty looks for not containing that situation.

I eventually made my way to the bleachers and watched the boys' races. I got out snacks and some milk for Miles out of my bag, which then turned into a huge mess because milk spilled into the bag that was now lined with crackers from Miles dumping the lunch baggie of crackers upside down. So the diapers, my wallet and keys also got covered in this wonderful concoction (I'm being sarcastic if you can't tell). It then, of course, started raining and I didn't have an umbrella since we own only one and Dave took it to work. I'm sure God thought this was all hilarious. It had been 2 hours and Cruise still had to run the 200, but I decided to call it a day. Cruise didn't mind. We went and got pizza instead.

Both the boys competed in standing long jump and javelin. Jett ran a 4x100 relay and the 50 meter. Cruise ran the 100 meter. I didn't get to see them do the javelin and I didn't get to watch Jett's relay because both occurred clear on the other side of the field. But they both did a great job at the long jump and their races, especially considering it was their first meet.

There will be plenty more meets over the next month, so hopefully we all get the hang of the craziness of it all. And for my sake, I really hope the boys learn to pay attention to when their events are called, but I'm not counting on it.

Update:
I just got the results from the meet. Apparently Jett didn't compete in the javelin after all. Cruise got 6.6 meters in the javelin (15th place of 17). In the standing long jump, Jett got 3 feet 4 inches (7th of 14) and Cruise got 4 feet 6 inches (5th of 15). In the 50 meter, Jett got 13.68 seconds (9th of 18). In the 100, Cruise got 17.25 seconds (5th of 19). I think they can go a lot faster if they can keep their heads straight and not looking at their opponents. So we'll work on that this week.