Up early today for a run with the team. They were leaving at 7, so it was 6:30 wake up, then a cup of coffee at the "Y" before heading out on the river path in town. Luckily- they had just had their big workout yesterday so our top dog, Landen, was on a recovery run. He's a 15:40 5k guy, so he could grind me pretty good on a training run if he wanted to. The river path in town has a couple miles of nice, flat(ish) gravel along the river, before cutting across a field, running through the Veteran's home area, and onto a bike path by the side of US 16 before cutting back onto a dirt path by the river. We made it maybe a half mile on that part of the path before flipping it and heading back. Kate reported that that stretch of trail was some of the nicest on her 10 mile run. We only went 9 and thus missed out on the fun. Nadir Yusuf was also out for the camp. He's a Willmar grad from ~8 years back and an outstanding distance runner. He debuted in the marathon at Grandma's this spring with a 2:15. Pretty cool to talk to him and get an insight of his training in the build up.
Post run, I was on Dash duty for a while while Kate ran. The team headed up for a hike to a fire tower, we headed over to Lake de Smet (reservoir) for a swim and a picnic lunch. It was a great beach for swimming. Really sandy and not a ton of people; very Dash friendly.
After returning, we met up for the team for their brief (~15 min) pool workout, followed by their annual balloon toss competition. Basically, they partner up and then ~36 groups face off with seeing who can throw it the farthest without breaking the balloon. I ended up getting wrangled in as well to pair up an unpaired runner. We weren't the first out, but it certainly wasn't pretty.
Dinner was pizza, although Kate and I picked up a ready-made salad as well from the grocery store.
Dessert was night #2 at the Lickity Splits ice cream shop down. Behind us in line was a Wyoming Grandmother talking to her Grandson. I can't remember exactly what the topic was, but the quote that stuck with me from the Grandma imparting social lessons on the boy: "If it's between being right and being kind, always choose kind." Much of my feeling is admittedly based on preconceived notions and biases, but I would still argue that this overarching attitude falsely dominates much of the great plains/mountain west states. I've heard multiple people talk about how Minnesota nice is fake (and it can be), but South Dakota people are genuinely really nice. We've certainly had good experiences with locals all over the West, but I can never shake the reality that these states overwhelming voted for Trump (Wyoming was 72%, I think) and a specific brand of Christianity or Mormons dominate the culture.
Nice is easy when everyone looks the same as you, has a similar financial situation as you, has a similar religion as you, etc. It gets a lot harder to be nice when complications like inequality and diversity come into play. Then being nice over being right isn't necessarily actually being nice in the end. It's also just straight up hard to believe that anyone who willingly votes for Trump twice has any interest in truly being nice. But I suppose that's my world view based on my upbringing and life.
Post dinner- we walked over to the Middle School where they had a google meet set up with former Willmar runner turned pro: Jessa Hanson. She had a cool story of her journey in running and it was great for the athletes be able to hear about training, nutrition, mental health, etc, especially I think, our female athletes to have a role model of this caliber speaking with them.
I don't know if this is good or bad, but listening to her talk about all these things, it again reinforced that everything I've learned and most things I'm doing after 24 years of running are the "right" things. The training philosophy is there, recovery, nutrition. At the end of the day, you can do all the right things and this is how far my body will take me. Genetics just takes some people farther. Again, whether good or bad to have this realization is debatable, but definitely one that Nick and I have talked about whenever we come across "elite" (whatever that means) runners and hear their stories.
Vacation time is precious, so I don't know if I'd want to make a yearly endeavor to go to Wyoming, but it was cool to see the routine that is referenced so much throughout the season and means so much to our athletes. I could definitely see coming back in the future for the extent of the trip, especially without having to juggle Dash, which made participating in all the activities more challenging.
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