As most of you know, I am coaching cross country at Mullen HS this season. The first two weeks of practice went smoothly and our preseason meet at D'Evelyn did exactly what I needed it to do; it showed me how incredible our girls team can be and how much work our guys team needs.
In the midst of the third week, however, kids left and right were dropping out of workouts, claiming that they were getting "pretty sick." Of the kids who are suffering from illnesses this week, a few are important Varsity runners, including our #2 guy runner and our #4 girl runner.
I learned at practice today that "pretty sick" would be considered an understatement. Weston, the #2 VBoys runner, told me that his doctor confirmed him of a coach's worst nightmare: Swine Flu.
And now it's reportedly spreading throughout the team. I'm a bit concerned, not only because I've been feeling under the weather since Friday, but also because this could be a potentially devastating blow to the girls' chances at winning State. We need to get healthy fast, because although it is only the beginning of the season, we need this time to keep our workouts and our mileage at the same rigorous pace that we had the last two weeks. If we lose this time, our aerobic capacity will be too weak to support our anaerobic capacity, which is usually what runners work on in the middle-to-end of the season.
I never thought I'd have to deal with an epidemic as a cross country coach. Crazy
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