first 7th grade track meet

Now that we've concluded that "running" is definitely Aspen's "thing", we are very excited to see how she does at all of her meets. The first track meet of her seventh grade year was last Thursday, 2-26-09. We traveled to Snyder for it, which is about an hour and a half away. There were about 5 or 6 different schools there, lots of kids. However, none of them proved to be much competition for Ms. Aspen!

Her coach had her running in three different races: the mile and 1/2, the 400, and the mile. One race started the meet, one race ended the meet, and the 400 was thrown in the middle...

In the mile and 1/2, there was no one even close to Aspen...six laps around the track, and she spent most of those out in front on her own. With the lack of competition, she ran a fairly slow time and now must learn how to race against herself and her best time. That will take some getting used to. She came in First Place and got a pretty medal!


First Place in the Mile and 1/2

The 400 was in the middle of the meet, and there were multiple heats due to the large number of runners. She came in third in her heat, I'm not sure what her overall place was...these shorter distances are not her strong point, she excels at a mile and above...

The second to last race was the mile...lots of girls in this race, and again, no one was even close to Aspen. Here she is early in the race, when two other girls were thinking they could hang with her! That proved to not be the case, and she again came through the finish line in First Place, with the second place girl a good 300m behind. Another medal for her growing collection!

First Place in the mile...

We are very proud of Aspen and have very high hopes for her running career through junior high, high school, and hopefully college. She is definitely laying the groundwork now for a great fututre and many opportunities.

I need to figure out some things of sports photography...the first photo was when the sun was out and it turned out well. However, by the time the mile rolled around, it had gotten dark and the big flood lights were on. Almost all of my photos from the 400 and the mile were blurry. Unacceptable!! I might look into at least buying a monopod, to prevent some of the movement. Any suggestions out there???