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Water water everywhere and not enough drops for Nathaniel, Caleb, and Matt to win

October 2, 2019 (Afternoon)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
My apologies to Samuel Coleridge and my 10th grade English teacher Alison Fastov for this atrocity of a title. I actually liked reading Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Due to the 95-degree heat, I suggested a game day involving sprinklers and water fountains, and lo and behold, that’s what we did. Nathaniel and I were hoping for a repeat of our summer game day triumph, which was bitterly stolen from our clutches by an unscrupulous posse of junior girls (finding a map in a classroom should NOT count as finding countries!) Myles abandoned us to run with the enemy (bringing their group total to an illegal 7 runners, despite Ana-Sophia’s attempt at a legal loophole) but we figured having Caleb Stutman-Shaw in our squad would be a major upgrade over Mr. Smith. We were foiled, alas. by Anthony’s newfound sense of punctuality, which seems to apply only to game days and not to speeches. Our strategy from the summer of going 20 minutes past the time limit in order to run down to the Kennedy Center and find all the flags hanging in the Hall of Nations was rendered useless by a five point penalty for each “part of a minute” past the deadline. I tried to save us with a secret shortcut I invented sophomore year (the year these guys were born) that, at the time, had resulted in the legendary Amandeep “shuffler” Chhabra getting a permanent scar on his wrist from a rusty metal fence spike. (Fun fact: That was my first time ever leading a run). Though Caleb and Nathaniel proved much more nimble than Amandeep and Andy “Beast” Garin had (Nathaniel appears to have taken this route before and knows better than I the safest place to climb) it was not enough to get us back in time. Fortunately, the game was declared to have no winner due to ambiguities in what counted as a source of potable water. So that’s kind of like getting a silver medal.

Later we learned that Amelia Myre is faster than me at 50m sprints even when she claims to only be going 90%. I might be able to keep up with Nomi on a good day. Myles is far out of reach.