Saturday, May 23, 2015

Mass Middle School State Championships

Today was the 2015 Massachusetts Middle School Track and Field Championship Meet -- big day for the Lydia and the Diamond Middle School track team.

Early bus from Lexington (7:30am); Lydia and were up well beforehand and had a nice breakfast of oatmeal and fruit. At around 11 my brother drove up from his place and we piled into the car to drive out to Fitchburg State University to catch the big event.

The weather, thank goodness, was perfect-- much cooler than last year. Sunny, breezy, high 60's (which down on the track translates into low 70's, since the astroturf heats up a lot in the sun). The scene:


This is a shot from one of the earlier heats -- one of Lydia's teammates (7th grader) running:


Lydia was in the last (fastest) heat for the girls 400M. Here are some shots. Tight pack of runners coming aroung the curve:


Starting to spread out:



Into the final stretch:




Lydia came in third, with a new personal record at 1 minute 3.6 seconds. Very close finish (she was 0.4 seconds off the leader). Third in the entire state-- wow!


Rustin, who was a very good sport sitting through 5+ hours worth of middle school track races one after the other (it gets sort of mind-numbing after a while):



Lydia getting her medal for the individual event:




After that it was a whole series of other events, then finally around 5pm it was the 4x400M relay. I don't have any photos of the actual race -- at the point that it started I realized that I had left my camera in my other bag, phooey.

It was a lot of fun to watch, I can tell you that. Lydia ran the first leg, and she opened up an absolutely huge lead over all the other runners; when she handed off to her teammate I could see the rest of the girls on her team were totally energized, and the other teams were already looking a little desperate.

Her team finished way, way out in front of the the rest of the pack; must have been a new school record for girls 4x400M, at least that would be my guess.

Medals for the relay:



Drove back home and made spaghetti for dinner; Lydia was pretty hungry when she got home.

Final results for the meet here.


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