In Hind Sight

Thursday, 30 August 2012

Today I volunteered to help out the cross-country running coach. I joined a group of Grade 4-6 students in a 5 km run. In hindsight, I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t know if that was a good idea. It is not easy running when it is 30 degrees outside with 80% humidity. Wow. At the end of the run I was almost a puddle. I was dripping with sweat. To make matters worse I am not even a runner, so all the students were way ahead of me. I began to fear they were going to lap me. I would like to say that fear made me run faster. That is not true. I was already running at my max speed, which is not very fast at all. Probably more like the speed of a fast experienced walker. The cross-country team runs twice a week. Luckily for me the week is almost over so I won’t have to run again till Tuesday. The good news is that maybe I will get in shape with all this running. I was the only girl in the club. I think I am going to have to put some posters up to recruit some girls to the running team.

While we were out running – we were on the nature preserve trail, so I didn’t have to worry about getting lost when I was so far behind the others – we saw this cage. I can’t read the sign but I think these are brooms. I am guessing that if there is a forest fire then people are suppose to take these brooms and attempt to whack the fire. I am guessing the idea is to smother the flames? I can’t think what else these are for. I saw 2 more of these cages along the trail. Maybe on Tuesday I will ask one of the students to translate the sign for me to find out if my guess was right. I looked for toads in the hill side as I ran along but I didn’t see any. I even stopped to look right in some of the holes but I couldn’t see anything. Maybe I will also bring a flashlight next Tuesday so I can get a better look into these little tunnels on the hill side. I am half afraid that I am going to find some creature that I don’t really want to find, like a huge spider, cockroach or a rat. Hummmm, do rats live in tunnels in hill sides? Maybe it is better if I don’t know what is living in these holes/tunnels. Some of them are really big. Like the size of a softball.