I was inspired by the many creative posts related to Nilesite's Open Call on Pure Energy to add a second post for the 5th Gallery Challenge!

Training meets Pure Energy...

In the case of the first set of photos the story here is of students, including my son, who started training in the summer and then entered the Cross Country Track program in September. The photos below are of an event from two years ago at the beginning of October when our high school hosted its annual invitational and about 25 schools sent their athletes to the event that lasts about five hours. The weather was perfect on this particular day as can be seen from the photos.

The largest race of the day is seen in the photos below and was for the junior varsity race that was one mile in length, as I recall. A neighbor of ours came in first and a bit ahead of the next runner which is a feat he has accomplished several times over the past year in Track & Field and in Cross Country.

There were around 125 runners in this race...

The timer's clock as seen partway through the race. There are multiple timers standing at the finish line and the information is downloaded to a nearby computer. Some races have microchips that each runner carries, but our school uses the method whereby each runner has a tag that is handed off after the finish line and kept in sequence so the time can be correlated with each participant.

Part two of the post relates to "training" as in a train line that runs north out of Manhattan. This is the Harlem Line of MTA Metro-North. Back in the late winter I took a number of shots out the window one late afternoon as I was heading north to the country. Below are selected shots that were the most interesting of about 50 photos taken:

Story and photos are © 2012 by B+Co., Inc.