I don’t usually think of myself as one to complain, but maybe I am.
We arrived to baseball practice a little late today. It was 5:10 pm, and YaYa’s coach likes the parents to check in with him before we leave. I waited to get his attention to confirm his plans for practice. The length of practice still varies but, even still, I figured that I could at least get 5 miles logged. I was dressed and ready to go. I just had to find out the ending time for today’s practice.
“Practice will end in 30-40 minutes,” he stated. “What?!” He always says that practice will end at 5:50 pm and then keeps the kids on the field until 6:10 pm. I knew today would be no different, but I would be on time regardless. I grumbled my complaints and I shot off for a “quick” run.
It felt good to let loose. I ran up the street past all of the people coming home from the workweek. Friday evening was here at last. I ran up to the main intersection, turned right for a few blocks and then ran back towards the field on a parallel street. Twenty-two minutes had passed, plus an unknown amount of time at two stoplights, by the time I was a street away from the school where the field was located. I continued down the street for several blocks, cut into the neighborhood and past the school. Practice was still going full force.
I continued down the street, and was rapidly coming up to a small group of teenager boys. They had the tough-guy “thug” look but I wasn’t worried for some reason. I had picked up the pace even more. I was going to re-do that final loop but I didn’t want to leave YaYa and the coaches waiting for me. My focus was on running at least 4 miles. It wasn’t the 5-6 miles that coach had asked me to run, and it wasn’t at the pace he had instructed either, but it was what I was able to do. As I got close behind the group of teens, they jumped and looked back at me. “Whoa!” I heard one boy say to the other. “I thought we were getting jumped,” the other said. I smiled and kept on going.
When I looped back on the field, I saw some of the team Mom’s retreating to their cars for warmth. I ran into the school campus and ran the remaining 0.3 miles around the perimeter of the field. If there wasn’t another team practicing on the other end of the field, I could have been happy to keep on running in circles in order to get that final mile. It just felt wrong to run through the area where this team’s parents were huddling trying to keep warm.
When Garminia signaled that I had completed 4 miles I stopped the timer and walked for a bit. They boys were a little off today. They were dropping balls and making awkward throws. I think they were cold. I was getting cold now too. So I went to the car, wrapped my fleece blanket around me, and sat on the bench and played a game with myPod.
At 6:10 pm, YaYa’s practice finally ended. It was about 20 minutes after I stopped running. *sigh* I knew it. But, who’s complaining? Certainly not me – I don’t complain.
