First two cross country meets (plus country #13 - Luxembourg)

Alex had his first two cross country meets of the season. The first was in Dusseldorf and the second was in Luxembourg.

Both meets were through beautiful forests. The Dusseldorf course was very flat. The other runners warned us about Luxembourg. They said it was the meet with lots of hills. It turns out "Luxembourg hills" are equivalent to "California flats". There may have been 30 feet of elevation gain through the entire 2.4 mile course.

It was fun to see all of the different schools running in these meets. They included the International Schools of Bonn, Brussels, Dusseldorf, Paris, as well as other schools from Brussels and Antwerp.

Here are a couple of pictures from the Dusseldorf meet.

For the Luxembourg race, the team left the day before and spent the night in a hotel. It was quite the adventure for Alex to get to spend 36 hours with the cross country team.

In Luxembourg we were super fortunate to have our friends Greg and Susan with us. Before the race, the four of us drove around Luxembourg a bit and somehow Google ended up sending us down an offroad trail. Mike was in his happy place! (And Greg and Susan were super patient to put up with our "adventuring".)

Here we are with Greg and Susan on the Luxembourg race course. This picture is on the big "hill". :-)

And here's Alex at the finish line, just behind another runner from Amsterdam.

Overall, these were super fun meets to attend. We're excited about the next ones. This coming Saturday and the following Saturday the races are in Brussels (there are three international schools in Brussels, so we'll be at two of them in the next two weeks). Then there is one race in the Netherlands and then the championship meet is here in Amsterdam on November 9. It should be a great season.