Hailey's XC Conference Meet

It was a short cross country season for Hailey this year. The heat at above 90 degrees had the district canceling many practices and meets. That's a total bummer too since she was really starting to enjoy running and it seems just when she was getting started, it was over. 

So last Wednesday, we trekked up to Bensenville to watch her in her final meet as a 7th grader. It was a tough course run primarily on grass and with a big hill you needed to run up twice. She got to see it earlier this year as one of the only other races that wasn't canceled this year. So this was her second time running it this season. 

The race started with the hill. And, I missed her going by there were so many kids and she tends to switch which side she runs on but I caught up with her after she came down the hill and she was at a pretty quick pace already running with the top girls at her school. Good pace, I told her but the real worry was if she came out too fast and she could maintain that pace the entire race. It was still very early. I wanted her to leave enough at the end for some kick as she got closer to the chute too. We'd been talking about the need to sprint in the end and she hadn't left enough in the tank to do that the previous meets. Plus, she says her strength is really her sprinting ability (can't comment on that since I haven't seen her sprint in a race yet but she says she beats all the fast long distance runners in sprints). 

Anyway, she was maintaining a pretty good pace the entire race and in the final 1/4 I could tell she was tired. "Do it for Connor Bedard!" she yelled to me as she rounded her final turn. And, then she was almost at the chute with two runners in front of her. "Sprint!" I yelled, "when you're in the chute, sprint!" And, she did. She's not that tall but she has long legs and they carried her past two runners and across the finish line where she placed 30th out of about 200 runners and #4 from her school. 

She probably ran her best race of the year. She learned a lot in the short season, made some new friends and told me that she's going to miss cross country! 

Running with the #2 and #3 runners at her school