Meet Cancellations

In the Midwest, spring is generally a time of year that experiences really bipolar weather patterns. One day it will be 70 degrees and sunny, and the next it will be 30 degrees with 20mph wind gusts. The weather is extremely unpredictable throughout April and May, and because of this, meets are often cancelled. 

When meets are cancelled, I have found that the first response of most high schoolers is to be pretty excited. I don't know why this is, or if it is just that my team is less committed and competitive than most others out there, but generally no one is too upset about a meet being cancelled or postponed. Meets are nerve raking, and let’s face it, pushing your body to the limit of its competitive and physical boundaries- aka racing- is no fun. That is why it can be a relief to find out that you don't have to race that evening, especially is it is one of the wonderful 30 degree days. 

On the flip side, when you have to miss three meets in a row due to weather related cancellations, which happened to my team over that last week and a half, one tends to get a little frustrated. Even though racing is no fun, in the end we stay in the sport for a reason. The desire to be better than you were before and compete is what drives runners, and I suppose all athletes in general. Athletes want the opportunity to see if they are progressing in their training and to figure out what competitive and physical level they are at, which is the opportunity that track meets and games give us.

Because of these reasons, when one finds out that a meet is cancelled, it can generate a lot of mixed feelings. In the end though, we normally just decide to be ok with the fact that the meet is cancelled because there is nothing that any of us can do about it! Besides, who really wants to race around the track in the freezing Iowa spring air anyway; if the meet is cancelled, there is most likely a good reason!