~:[CH4 - Day 318]:~ The Dust Bowl

~:[CH4 - Day 318]:~ The Dust Bowl

As a history teacher, I learned and also taught about the dust bowl but never thought I'd leave through one in real life. Since we had the last races of the day, we didn't have to leave for the course until noon, which gave me plenty of time to organize myself and even grab Yoshinoya and TapEx. I then headed over and we were on our way. We hit a bunch of traffic on the way and ended up getting there about 80 minutes later. When arriving, I knew what to expect since we had been there before or so I thought. The course was much dustier than before and we huge heats, it made it troublesome for any athlete not in the front to avoid sucking in dust. Heck, I had black boogers all evening after getting back from the race. In any case, while we did not have the race we had hoped, I was proud at the effort of my athletes and the push they gave at the end of the race. We made improvements from the last time we were there and you can't ask for much more than the team's best effort. It definitely was a sad moment, as I this team had a lot of very likable personalities that made coaching enjoyable. While the troubles of the course continued with dust covered everything, thorns in places I never knew existed, and exit traffic and return traffic that was ridiculous, I was happy to have spent this season with these athletes and no ridiculousness of a course and CIF experience could ever change that. At least my commemorative CIF patch also was covered in dust (sadly, I didn't even have to drop it on the ground to get it like that). We ended the night together at Pho Tasty and I did a quick escape to Tpumps which helped me recover quicker from the dust bowl 2015.