Runners

This spring has been a season of running for Emily, Samantha, and Abigail. Emily has known all school year that she wanted to play a sport in the spring, but she kept going back and forth between tennis and track. Eventually she decided on track and we're quite glad she did. She had a bit of an injury plagued season with IT band troubles early on and then a hip injury to finish out the season. But, as she said, "Those three injury free weeks were glorious!" Even when she was injured she still pushed herself and improved her time at every meet.

Emily, in red, running the mile
During tryouts Emily was put into the distance group and she continued running distance during the season. Her race was the mile and she sometimes ran the 800 meter as well.

And here she is at the same meet early in the season
Like anything else, running track has some unintended consequences. First was her tan. She loved that being outside for two or more hours every afternoon was getting her tanner than I think she's ever been.  Well, except for her feet which were covered by running shoes every day. They stayed as white as ever.*

*Not Emily's actual feet...but they looked very much like this!
The second thing was that she was hungry all. the. time. Her coach told everyone at the beginning of the season not to worry about their weight because they'd be running so much that they could eat anything they wanted. She took that advice to heart.

The best post-practice snack is obviously cookies and soda
Samantha joined her school's running club this year and had a lot of fun running each Wednesday after school.  Thanks to running club she's more than halfway to her goal of running 50 miles this year. As part of running club she ran the Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon. They had a program where kids could sign up and run the 26.2 miles on their own a little bit at a time.  So it was a marathon that she ran over a little bit at a time over the period of a month or so.

Abigail also ran track this spring, but on a bit smaller scale. Each middle school in the county held track tryouts after spring break for a middle school meet that was to be held in May. Abigail was chosen to represent her school in the mile. So for the next month or so after tryouts she went to practice a couple of times a week to get ready for the big meet. The day finally came and we were all excited to see Abigail run in the big race!

She's the red head in the grey shirt and glasses just to the left of center in this picture
I think Abigail was nervous about the race. She had asked Emily for tips so Emily made her a four page illustrated outline detailing what she should do each lap of the race. Other than waterfalling into the inside lane as quickly as possible, I think Abigail pretty much forgot all the advice and just ran. She completed the race right in the middle of the field, finishing in 7 minutes 6 seconds. It was a bit slower than her goal time but still a very respectable mile time especially for someone who'd never run in a race like this before.

Now that all the running is over our lives have slowed down and we have a lot more time to just be together at home and I'm doing a lot less driving all over the county getting the girls to and from practice. I think Emily spoke for both of them the other day when she said, "I need to get out and start running again." They have definitely caught the running bug!

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