State Championships

Photos from the Mass middle school state championship race this weekend... results here.

Fine weather-- cool but sunny, a wonderful day to watch the race.

They rejiggered the course this time around to create a larger starting, line, which I thought was a big improvement. This is the start of one of the boys races (huge line of runners) -- less crowding, meaning less jostling and fewer runners falling:

Before Lydia's race:

Coach OB, the grand master of middle school cross-country coaches...

Leaders in the girls championship race, early on (note the three Diamond runners);

Lydia running in the girls championship race:

Lydia finished 35th overall in the girls championship race, with a time of 12:58 and pace of 6:58 (yikes! I have never even come close to that).  The diamond girls team won handily, boys team won as well -- yay!

Hurray-- great way to end the season...

Andover/Exeter Cross Country

Amy and I drove up to Exeter to watch Ethan and the rest of the PA cross country running team take on their rivals, Phillips Exeter. Weather was absolutely wretched-- overcast, very cold, drizzling. I was very glad for all the layers I had on.

Exeter is a very strong team; Andover definitely had their work cut out for them. Here is Ethan at the mid-way point, with a big lead over the second runner:

Final stretch:

After the race:

Ethan finished first, with a time of about 15:49 (a new PB, first race under 16 mins). Results here.

Alas, the team did not do so well. Exeter won the race in an absolute squeaker (27-29), blech. Ethan gave his absolute best, however, and the team put up a good showing in spite of the final result.

Girls Cross Country (Diamond vs. Clarke)

Couple of photos from Lydia's Oct 27 cross country meet: Diamond Middle School vs their arch-rivals, the cross-town Clarke Middle School.

Here are the girls in their "huddle" before the start. Serious expressions first ...

They finish with a cheer that involves a lot of yelling and them jumping up and down -- this is one of my favorite photos of the year:

Start of the race:

Leaders after one lap. Lydia's friend Kesinia is lurking behind the other two runners in front, biding her time (queue the theme music from "Jaws", since she will eventually come in first).

Lydia hitting the same turn:

Lydia at the finish:

One of the Clarke runners passed her in the last 50 feet, so she was super upset about that... but on the other hand, a different way to look at it -- Diamond's number one runner beat the top runner from Clarke, Diamond's number two beat the second runner from Clarke, and so on down the line until Lydia... the girl in the photo above passing her at the finish line wasn't even the girl she needed to beat (Lydia was way ahead of her counterpart). Girls team won the race handily...

Braces Off

Before and after photos (braces for Lydia). She didn't have them on quite so long as Ethan did, but she was certainly glad to see them go...

Here's the "before":

And the "after":

This is back in mid-September, of course... since then she has also had her long hair cut off, so she looks even more different now.