Yesterday, The Kid had his last track meet of the season.
Because it’s hot here now, the meet started at 7 instead of 8. Call time remains an hour before the meet starts. Yesterday’s meet was just over half an hour’s drive from here. I was up at 4:30.
Early morning temps were nice, but it didn’t take long before we were baking. All of the stadiums we’ve been in, the fields run north-south and the home bleachers are on the west side (facing east). Which means that even with our handy oversized umbrella, we’re in the sun for much of the morning.
Once the sun was high enough, we had shade (hooray!) but it was a little stuffy under there.
Anyway. The point is, we were up early, and it was toasty.
His events (two track and one field) were clustered, so the down time was almost all front-loaded. For the first time ever, we were done before 1:00.
Once the meet was done, we came home and had late lunch. I took a nap; The Climbing Daddy and The Kid did other things. I woke up feeling better than when I laid down but still wiped out.
This is the point in the story that connects with the second piece.
A year ago, I volunteered at a competition at my local climbing gym.
I decided that I wanted to climb in it this year. (Upcoming links are all to previous posts with more detail about this journey.)
I learned how to boulder (though I was not at all good at it).
This year’s comp, we had to do three mini-comps to be eligible.
I did two before finding out sad news, and didn’t pursue the third.
It turns out, the final competition—the main event—was yesterday. Climbers reported to the gym at 3, I think (might have been 4).
If I had decided to continue I would have had a bouldering competition late yesterday afternoon. At nap time.
So while I was really disappointed in February when I found out the comp wasn’t what I wanted, I was really happy yesterday not to have to go attempt to climb competitively.
(And the four of us ended up splashing around in the pool for an hour, then The Climbing Daddy and I went for a tired-but-necessary run, and those were better than bouldering any day.)
Oh! And the photo? A giant dust devil we saw on the way home from the track meet.
