Greg, my dad, Reed, and Livy took a road trip to watch Addie run in the district Cross country meet in Pendleton Or on Halloween day. We hope Livy might take up running and Reed needed to see what a race actually looks like after years of jeering her finish placements. They enjoyed the time off work to read for hours on end. Addie was surprised to see them all.
Warmups with her teammates.
The start line. All girls from 1a-3a run together there is no seperating like the boys enjoy. The team to the right of addie with blue and red are the speedsters.
And their off. I love how strong Addie runs.
This was the surprise and gold of the day. This is Zion she is a runner from Elgin. She and Addie run in the same time ranges. In the running world your times are all documented and stored away on a nasty little tool called Athletic.net. Those times are immortalized forever on that data base. Thus at any time you can compare yourself or rank youself based on times with your fellow runners. This is good and bad.
This sweet lady ran with Addie most of the race. She would encourage Addie hey lets pass them about other runners. But mostly setting a pace Addie matched stride for stride. Addie hasn't had girls to run with in her day to day training and it changes from race to race depending on who shows up.
In the shoot about finished Zion pulled away Addie had given her all. She beat her old personal best by 14 seconds it was 19:49 she ran 19:35 this day thanks to Zion, maturity, and determination. This is pretty rare for a girl runner to run better than her younger self time.
The Elgin team won. Zion was in tears for Addie. She had a spot for state because of her team. Addie was edged out of state participation. But she ran her best. She was back where she knew she could be. She set a new school record. It was a good day for running.
The selfless ness of this fellow runner really touched me and Addie. It was so thoughtful of her. This is why I love this sport its not about killing the competition but about cheering each participant through doing better than they have before no matter what that looks like. It's about improving yourself each day. From gaining control over the debilitating nausea of last season to running stronger and managing a pile of leadership responsibility Addie did well. It was an enjoyable season. It ended well.
Livy and Reed were delighted to find a perk of traveling with Papa Corn is good food locations. He knew of a deli in La Grand that served better than average sandwiches. They were absolutely happy to find delicious pies on the shelf as well. So after a great lunch and dessert they watched the runners, then met the football bus and sent Reed to Umatilla to win the foot ball league title and headed home to be the late attendees to the Halloween party. It was a full day with lots of good. We are blessed.
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