Last year was my first year of cross-country skiing. We had snow on the first day of practice, so it was supposed to be a great year for the team. Unfortunately, within a week the snow was gone... so dry land practice began.
Dry land practice included running four laps around the school's football and soccer field put together. Also with random drifts that had to be at least six inches deep, with an inch of ice on top, with random spots that you're not expecting with no ice on top... yeah, not so fun to run in.
After running laps, we usually played a game that the coach called soccer-golf. If you haven't heard of it, it's a game where between two teams, you throw a soccer ball by hand to make goals for your team. Now that seems pretty simple, until you add tackling.
This game usually takes place for us in two inches of mud or more. One of the days we played, my brother, Taylor, and our coach, John, were captains of the two teams. They usually are the only ones to do any tackling so, it's common sense to watch out for them. By the end of the game that day, mostly everyone was at least covered up to the knee with mud...but, Taylor and John? No, they were dripping with it from head to two.
As much fun as that day was, my top favorite had to be one of the days even the coaches had gotten bored with the running laps, this usually means we run a two or three mile through town, like cross country running practice.
We usually would split into two groups, everyone wearing orange construction vests so cars could see us, one group had everyone who had been on the ski team before, and the other had everyone who haven't. Today it was me, my friend Bella, and of course, John. Our run that day, started at the school, and went through town till we got to the River Walk in town. Now, you may know that the River Walk, (it's a trail along a river... common sense right?) closes in the winter. Yeah... we didn't.
So we ran for a little while, and then there was a sign on a tree ahead of us that said, 'Closed for Winter'. Now this is where most people would have stopped realizing that we weren't supposed to be running there. Nope, we all read it, and John said."Huh, I didn't know it closed." And we all just kept running. Now, when we got to the steps by the Holiday gas station, that's when it all clicked in our heads that it was closed, because there, on a gate blocking off the trail, was a sign at the top of the steps, that said, 'Closed'. So, in our orange vests, size XL, we jumped the gate in the least suspicious way possible. Then John just had to say, "Time to run." So... we were running out of a place that was closed, in orange vests, with guilty expressions. Since that day I've wondered if anyone even saw us, and how many other people have done the same thing as us, and gone on the River Walk, even though it's closed.
