In The Hartland: Hole in the Wall XC Meet

Ever since Lia's high school cross country season officially began on August 22nd, she has never missed a practice. She has ran with her team five or six days a week (depending on whether or not there is a Saturday invitational meet) and has given it her all. She seriously runs 15 to 25 miles a week and has continued to improve. We found out from her coach after the first two meets that Lia had qualified to run on the varsity team. We were all so blown away by this as only the top seven girl and guy runners qualify for varsity. Although the majority of the team is older than Lia, there are only four girls that consistently run faster than her each week at the meets. There is another 9th grader who runs neck in neck with Lia and sometimes runs a little bit faster or a little bit slower than her depending on the week. So, Lia is either the 5th or 6th fastest girl on her team which has been such an accomplishment and a testament to how hard she has trained over the summer since finishing her track season early last June.

However, Lia's XC journey this year has not been without some bumps along the way. After discovering the wonderful children's theater in our town last June, we signed up Lia to audition for the fall musical production that takes place almost at the exact same time. The first practice was the evening before the first day of school and the performances are the weekend after her state XC championship meet. Since we thought that the high school cross country schedule would be similar to her junior high schedule from last year, we naively thought that she would be able to participate in these two activities simultaneously without any conflicts. However, we quickly found out that this would not be the case as several meets are on Saturdays when Lia has play practice. As a result, I had to make some very difficult phone calls two weeks in a row to Lia's director to beg for permission for Lia to miss practices for four regular-season meets and then to miss two crucial dress rehearsals for post-season meets when we found out that Lia made varsity. This is due to the fact that her coach absolutely refused to let Lia run on the varsity team unless she could commit to these post-season meets which also was a very difficult conversation to have. Needless to say, I seriously lost several good nights' sleep tossing and turning over these unexpected turn of events.

In addition, Lia has been suffering from hip pain in both of her hips ever since she started running long distances with the high school team at the end of the summer. Although she was managing the pain on a daily basis with ice and Motrin the first few weeks of the season, it really blew up two days before the Portland invitational. Lia was so excited to run in this race as it is the largest, high school cross country invitational on the entire West Coast. She was absolutely devastated when we made the difficult decision at 8:45 the night before that she should stay home and rest and ice her hips all weekend long instead of competing due to the fact that it hurt her hips to even walk around our house that evening. So, needless to say, her coach was not thrilled about her last minute cancellation.

So, ups and downs set aside, I am happy to report that Lia's hips are doing a little bit better. We miraculously got in to see a brand new sports medicine doctor at our children's clinic a week later who diagnosed Lia with a weak hip muscle (called the Tensor Fasciae Latae) and an extremely tight IT band. He gave her a lengthy set of stretches to do nightly and will send her to physical therapy after her busy XC and play season ends next month. Lia is managing to nurse her hips along in the mean time and has even PR'd at both of the meets that she has run in since she had to cancel on the Portland invitational. In addition, Lia is being a champ about juggling seminary, school, cross country, play practice, and homework. She is getting straight As right now and is gone on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m. and then still has to do homework when she gets home. I don't know how she is juggling it all, but I am super proud of her! And, I am happy to report that we have learned our lesson and Lia will never juggle participating in a play while running in a sport. So as long as Lia can survive until the middle of November, she will hopefully never have a season this busy again during her high school career!

So with all of that said, here are some fun pictures from Lia's big adventure today. Although she missed the largest XC invitational on the West Coast, she was able to compete in the largest one in Washington state. It is hosted annually in a town called Arlington about two hours north of us and is called "Hole in the Wall" as the runners actually run through a hole in the wall (see photo below). Only the varsity runners from her team were allowed to compete and so the kids had a great time driving up there in tiny vans instead of a large bus. Lia had so much fun and was gone from 9:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. She ran her 5k in 22:47 and shaved 14 seconds off of her time and her hips didn't even hurt! I am so grateful that Lia was able to go and have this experience and even came home with a t-shirt to prove it!