home is where the coffee cup is
Dec 21 2009
We got a few more inches of snow last night and ended up with about 15 inches total. It made shoveling the drive much easier today than yesterday. Yesterday, we work on three different sled runs, two in our backyard and one on the path. Here’s a clip of Abby going down the sled run on the path.
Here are a few more photos of the snow (plus one of Zeke in his cape):
Nov 06 2009
Yesterday was Josiah’s cross country athletic conference championships. His school is part of a fairly small private school conference here in Northern Virginia. Our conference’s top male runner may run the 5k under 18 minutes, so it is not on the same level as public schools. The public school region championships are massive and some of the top runners can run the 5k under 16 minutes.
Back in August, after the first practice, the coach told me that there was a possibility that Josiah could break 20 minutes for the 5k and make “all conference” at the end of the season. I did not believe him.
Just prior to that conversation, I had watched Josiah run a 5k road race and finish at 23:30. After that conversation, Josiah ran a 23:30 at his first meet. I considered his coach overly optimistic.
The team trained really hard. There were quite a few injuries. The coach was really tough on them. The practices and meets have been relentless. Yet, all their run times continued to drop. Prior to the conference championships, Josiah’s best time was a 20:15. In order to make “all conference,” you must be one of the top 15 runners to finish.
Yesterday, I watched him do what he has done since he was two years old: Sprint to the finish. He was behind the top 15 runners prior to the last hill where he began to pick up his pace. He started passing runners, but the other runners fought back and as they approached the line, I saw Josiah start to fade. Then, as I’d seen many times before, he refused to lose out. Some mysterious gear kicked in and his pace surged to the end.
He finished 14th with a time of 19:45 and made “all conference.”
Dale and Mugs Manry have been happily married since June 1990. They have 4 kids: Josiah, Abby, Gabe and Zeke.
You can contact us at
dale at manrymission dot com
