I just got home tonight from five days in Blowing Rock, NC chaperoning 28 local runners at a high school XC camp. I’m tired, but rejuvenated – there isn’t anything as entertaining as watching a team build chemistry by hanging around each other in close, smelly quarters. There’s also nothing like Moses Cone Park up in Blowing Rock when you’re a runner looking for a break from the Florida heat and humidity. This was my 9th and last time doing this – my youngest daughters are seniors this year. They always say the three best things about being a teacher are June, July and August. It’s not as true when you are at FSU – it’s just a lot quieter and not nearly as much fun up on campus. But without any classes to teach and almost no one around the building, I decided that this was the summer I was going to “preview” what retirement might look like for me, at least in the early morning.

I’ve started almost every Monday through Friday this summer with David Yon, Brandi Campbell, Kara Guinan, Joe and Maie Moody, and sometimes Hawthorne Hay and Alyson Churchill up at Phipps Park for the Gulf Winds Track Club SMIRFS program. The term was coined by Gary Droze many years ago, and I think it more or less stands for Summer Morning Is Running Fun. This summer, we have averaged between 30 and 40 elementary and middle school youth coming out for running, Sharks and Minnows, ultimate frisbee, and, of course, popsicles. The kids learn how to properly warm up, how to work as teammates, how to run as a pack, and how to laugh every time someone says the word fartlek. The kids will finish their summer with Breakfast on the Track on August 8, and I can’t wait for them to see how much they have improved since their first mile time trial about a month ago.

In addition to the SMIRFS, every morning you can see about 35 Chiles and ultra-motivated Montford runners across the parking lot with Montford coach Brad Busboom and, on some mornings, Chiles coach David Knauf, when he decides to preview retirement also. Running across the parking lot from Forest Meadows are also large groups of Lions—the Leon variety—as well as Marauders from Maclay and Crusaders from Holy Comforter. It’s a veritable tidal wave of dedicated youth giving up their summer morning sleep to beat the heat and get ready to PR this fall. I have no idea what it’s like in other cities, but I can’t recall ever seeing anything like this before I moved to Tallahassee 20 years ago. Maybe it’s the trails, or maybe it’s the SMIRFS program, or maybe it’s the GWTC Summer Track Series at Maclay that Jeanne O’Kon, Tom Perkins, Bill Lott, and others have organized since well before my kids were running their first 50-yard dashes at around 3 or 4 years old.

All I know is that we have something really special here at GWTC and in Tallahassee. It’s no surprise that there’s rarely a year when a school in Tallahassee isn’t winning or, at the very least, finishing on the podium at the state meet, which is, not coincidentally, hosted each year at Apalachee Regional Park right here in Tallahassee. I hope that, when it is time for me to retire for real, I’m healthy enough to be out here on the trails every day like Bill Hillison and so many others who call this place home. I love these trails, and I love the dedication of the kids who wake up early—and the parents who do, too—to get them there. We really do have something special here.