Speedy Kidzales

you know like Speedy Gonzales? I loved that cartoon growing up!

This past Sunday was another cross country meet for Hank so Ella and I tagged along with him. There seemed to be a LOT more kids at this meet, and it didn't seem as organized as other meets we've been to.  You do the course walk according to the distance you're running (of course) and they had people WALKING around yelling the distance they were leading.  That meant crowds of kids and parents were trying to follow some yelling guy through crowds trying to follow another yelling guy. Loads of fun.

At other meets, they gather everyone into one group and have the leaders STAND STILL  next to the announcer guy in front of everyone. Then they call out each distance and the folks for that distance line up behind the appropriate leader. This seems to have worked well at past meets.

At the starting line.

Hank is the 5th from the right in the blue shirt/red shorts.

It was a figure of 8 course so they ran this particular stretch twice. Kind of nice so parents didn't have to run all over the place to cheer

The course was mostly flat with a handful of very steep but short uphills. It wasn't very technical but almost completely in the sun (which was shining brightly that day).

Coming up in the last .3/.4 to go. He was seriously losing steam so I was cheering like a crazy woman.

He finished 10th overall which is an improvement over his other races. He also finished faster with a 10:00* flat.  The winner finished in 8:3?. How insanely fast is that!

Hank did a GREAT job and I'm so PROUD of how he has hung in there and run well at his meets and practices.

*We found out later that the course for his first race was quite a bit short. He ran that in 9:40, and his coach told me we should add a minute to that time as we consider his times at other races.