Cross Country Meet - Allen Style

 1.  Attend youth group lock-in the night before

2.  Play outside in the rain in your warm up suit

3.  Get warm up suit so wet and dirty it can not be worn to the meet the next day

4.  Wear street clothes instead

5.  Hang out with friends while waiting for race to start


6.  Eventually warm up a bit

7.  Remove street clothes, change shoes and prepare to run

8.  Go to start line

9.  Begin to run

10.  No matter the terrain, the rain, the mud or the incline, keep a steady pace throughout the race

11.  When encounter obstacles (there were some thigh high rails that the runners had to weave around) jump over them rather than run around them.

12.  At the end of the race pour on the speed and pass other runners in a race to the finish (Allen passed four runners on the track and three in the transition from path to track)

13.  Finish 63rd among 108-120 guys running (count of total runners unconfirmed)

14.  Hang out with team afterwards - the best part

Cross Country Meet

allen is the most obscured runner in this photo

Saturday was Allen's first cross country meet.  As the meet was significantly far away, I did not attend.

Significantly far = kids boarded bus at school at 1pm checked into hotel in England around 9pm.  Kyle attended as the male chaperone so he was there for Allen and to take photos.

This past spring (before breaking his arm) Allen decided to take up running.  One night he said, I'm going to go running.  As it was dark, I made him stay in the neighborhood - he put on some shoes and for three hours circled the neighborhood.

For the months when his activity was restricted due to his arm, he was anxious to get back to running.  So when we got to Belgium (and the months of restriction elapsed) Kyle and I encouraged him to give cross country a try.  He has been running daily with his team and training.

According to Allen his best skill is consistency of pace.  Running around the track his laps time the same.  He doesn't slow down he doesn't speed up.  His coaches like this and encourage this consistency.

 On Saturday, Allen got his first taste of American high school competition - in England. The course was in a local park close to Alconbury air force base.  It was a 5k course.

Kyle says there were about 40 boys running.  At about the 1k mark Allen was in the last quarter of the pack and by the 2k mark Allen was towards the middle.

In the end Allen was the fifth to finish of the boys on his team.  He finished 16th with a time of 22:13.  Allen says he was neither tired nor winded so next meet he's going to go for a faster pace to see if he can improve his time.

I look forward to seeing him run soon when he'll be a bit closer to home.