On Being An Anachronism

Getting older provides various opportunities to look back (and forward) and determine whether or not one was born too soon or too late (as in the case of the Poni-Tails). I had a moment of epiphany today when I realized that I was probably where I should be and at the appropriate time.
I was working for the Horizon Leagure cross country championships...riding between selected points on my bike, reading split times. That was my assigned task, at least. Otherwise, I was simply walking around taking pictures of the fans (some painted green!) and the runners in an attempt to get a flavor of the event. Two things caught my eye which reminded me that I was fortuante to be detached from the coaching business...at least at this timne and at this level.

1. Fifteen minutes prior to a race, I observed a runner talking on her cell phone as if it were an ordinary day. As a coach, I would have had apoplexy at the sight of an athlete preoccupied with her life at the moment we'd worked for all season. I had visions of myself running over there, grabbing the phone and flinging it about as far as I could without doing significant damage to my arm, stomping on it, and informing the athlete that she'd better arrange a ride home...or finish in the top ten!

2. As the teams were divesting themselves of sewatsutis, etc. in serious preparation for the beginning of the race, I detected another athlete kissing her boyfriend, and I thought I would have a heart attack on the spot. How can any athlete be thinking about something like that before the last meet, in many cases, of the season? I was muttering to myself for the next ten minutes at least, and almost missed starting my stopwatch on time.

All of this hearkened back to the days of coaching junior high girls basketball during which winning and losing were much the same (to them, at least), and I recalled the urge to simply scream at the top of my lungs. Getting pounded by a nearby foe was tough to take for me, but not for them. OK, OK, I get it: junior high isn't such a big deal, but college athletes?
Makes me glad I was simply working and spectating. Coaching...I couldn't handle it.