Miss FauxRunner ran her first 5k race this weekend. And surprised us all and herself by podiuming 2nd in her AG! 

It was at a race that is very popular in the Indian community as a fundraiser. Mr. FauxRunner ran with her to pace her. She wasn’t sure at first if she wanted to run with him and was very nervous that she wouldn’t be able to keep up. But after about a mile of trying to warm up, he says she settled in and ran very steadily and without any complaints on any of the hills.

There ended up being some confusion on her category as she was timed as a “walk” but she was actually competing as a runner. Her chip timed her at 27:41 ?? and she came in 2nd behind the 1-10 AG winner (by 13 seconds). We had estimated that she’d take about 30min. 
(We went by after to get it clarified and they recognized her with the award, although official results still place her in the walk category)

The other little minion ran really well too. Addled along having fun for 2 miles with her friend with runs and walk breaks and then when I caught up to them, she said she wanted to run and took off. Ran the entire last mile by herself – she said her hardest thing was to run slow enough that she could make the entire mile but not too slow. Welcome to the world of racing! She finished in 48:xx – 50:xx – she wasn’t chip timed.

She received her award from free India’s first female Olympic Athlete in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, Mary DSouza.

Needless to say, she’s very very proud of her placement. She/we never expected her to place, there were so many kids there. 

(One shadow over her timer/placement is that we think that the timers were off – eg. Dad and her ran together step in step but Dad’s chip time shows almost a minute faster than her chip time, same gun time for both. They started towards the back of the 5ks runners. Dad estimated that they’d run in about 30min, but official time is 27:41. But then every runner there was measured with the same clock, so the placement holds and there’s always her next race to find out her potential 5k time.)

She’s been running 1 mile every morning before school on the treadmill. I don’t know why she’s been motivated to wake up earlier everyday for that treadmill Mile (5:45am wake up time ?). The kid isn’t a natural talent in sports, but she is learning that hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard! 

And I can’t think of a better way to teach her the lessons of hard work than running and triathlon.

I hope that she has discovered a love that will last her throughout her life.

a.k.a Proud Mum