I like to look at results of races. I like to see how I have done, how my athletes finished (from Wendy - "PR by 4 1/2 minutes!!!!! Felt great, I now wonder how much faster I can do! :-)", and how the competition fared. I am no different now that my son is running cross country. The invitationals often have multiple races for each age division. He raced at McQuaid Invitational in Rochester a week ago in the sophomore race. As a freshman it means he was up against kids 10th grade and younger. I was pretty thrilled when he finished 16th! A new PR ( not as hard to do when it seems every race is a different distance), but still crazy hard. His team finished first and got to head up on the stage to get their plaque. A week later the family headed down to Manhattan to watch him run with his team in the Freshman C race at the Manhattan Invitational. Coach had put together a good team (we had 4 freshman teams of at least 5 kids each!). I was about 1/4 mile off the start to get some good pics as they headed into the woods. I really expected our boys to be toward the front, but they were a bit buried in the 215 bodies. I caught Alex and followed him with my lens yelling (cheering) the whole time. I had enough time to sprint across the field and get a spot at the open section of the gate near the finish. I knew I would need to lean in to get photos of the guys sprinting the last 400m. I was ready as the first guy came down. Then in 4th and 5th I saw the first two Shen jerseys. I was clicking away and cheering on Alex and Evan. Evan had Alex by a step and they were both working hard. Then came Greg in 8th - the third day back running after an injury and in tenth Kyle. Woo hoo the boys had sealed the first place trophy! Being new to this I wasn't sure how deep medals went. As I was talking pictures of the JV race (where our boys ran well), I heard them announcing the Freshman C race. Alex was 5th and yup the team was first. I was cheering like a crazy proud Mom. Luckily Alex was with the team so he didn't have to be embarrassed.
Today I was revisiting the results putting together some sponsorship info for our Veterans Day Dash. I did the analysis to see that our freshman team had the second fastest time out of the 5 races run. Not bad. Then I decided to see how Alex stacked up. He was 12th overall out of 771 runners! Wowzer. Pretty damn proud of my runner! Who knows what the future holds for him, but I can tell you I'll have fun analyzing his results and puffing up my chest as I do!
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