Yesterday, Sarah completed her third 5K race in the New Balance Girls On The Run 5K at George Mason University. The thunderstorms the previous night had abated, and while everything was soggy, it wasn't raining (for the first time)--and in fact, as the national anthem was sung, the sun even came out from behind the clouds for the start!
Sarah did a terrific job, again. She had one piece of equipment failure (right shoelace came untied about 1/2 mile into it) and had to stop for that, but otherwise, never so much as slowed to a walk the rest of the time. This year's course was a little more difficult, I believe: instead of one long slow hill to climb then a slow descent, like last year, we had the long hill, then a series of up-and-down hills for much of the rest of the race. But she never stopped, no siree!
At the very end, after chugging up that last hill, she turned the corner, saw the finish line ahead--and just bolted. Flat-out sprinted to the end, leaving her old man puffing and trying to keep up. (I didn't; I was a good 30 feet behind her at the finish.) It helped her, though, to her best time of all three races she's run: she completed her 5K in 32:04! That was good enough to finish #821 overall (out of over 3200 finishers--putting her in the top 25%), and fourth overall among Silverbrook's 19 girls who ran. For reference, last year she ran it in 35:50 and finished in the top 37%...so she's definitely improving!
We're all very proud of her accomplishment in finishing the Girls On The Run program for her third time, and for improving as she went. I've asked her if she would be interested in doing any of the other 5Ks that happen around town, and she allowed as how she might be...so who knows, maybe this will become a habit.
No comments:
Post a Comment