The World According To Madeleine

Track season has ended. Track was a lot of fun this year. Everyone pretty much seemed to get along, or they just left you alone if you didn’t like each other. All the seventh graders were awesome, I made a lot of seventh-grade friends, who I’m going to miss an awful lot next year. I’m hoping that they’ll all join the the cross country and track team when they join the rest of us in high school. In addition to making a lot of friends and just generally having fun, the girls team was great, we won a lot of meets including the Wolverine Conference Meet at the end of the season. I met people, we won a lot, and I found my race. Speaking of my race, my PR is still 2:54, but at a relay meet my split might’ve beaten that, if not it tied, I’ll just have to look at the video again to check the time. Also, at the conference meet, I ran the 55 hurdles, and I managed to finally three-step the hurdles, except for the last one, where I lost speed and panicked, it slowed me down, but I won my heat.

Also on the running subject, cross country training is starting this summer, and hopefully I’ll be able to go to training camp, that sounds like a lot of fun. Cross country next year just sounds fun, we get to run the game ball to homecoming, and we’ll do this thing called the twenty-four hour marathon, where the whole cross country team goes to the track and one person runs a mile, then another, and it goes on for a day. That sounds like a lot of fun, but for people who don’t like to run it sounds like torture. Thank goodness I like to run. The coaches seem nice, and they say that all the runners are nice and we all end up loving each other. Extra bonus.

When my dad was a freshmen in track he ran hurdles. He was pretty good. The school was small, the track team was small, so the kids did a lot of strategic switching events depending on who they were against. They were at a meet with a school that had a lot of strong hurdlers, and the coach didn’t think my dad would do that good, so he switched his event to the 800, which he never had run before. He won, and one of the upperclassmen said to the coach, “Lang found his event.”

Our first track meet was a while ago, on April 20. Dad said I should run the 800 and the 400, I thought he was crazy. I decided not to say anything and let my coaches decide what I would run. Of course they chose the 800 and the 400 (and the 200 hurdles). Since I had no choice, I had to find out how the heck I was supposed to run the 800. I asked Dad, and he said that I had to start out at a really fast run, not a sprint and that it should feel too fast, I should stick with the first three or four girls, ad then when there was 200 meters left, start picking up speed and start passing them. Accelerate around the curve and then be running as fast as you possibly can on the straightaway.

Right before the race I felt like I was going to throw up I was so nervous. The gun went off and I started faster than I thought I should’ve. There was no one in front of me. Hmmm… a variable in my plan I didn’t expect. I thought that the girl behind me would catch me after I ran out of energy and slowed down, but I didn’t slow down, I did everything right, and I won. I got a time of 2:54, which is really good. After I ran I felt like I was going to die, but after that feeling passed I felt really good, the 800 is a really fun race. Aftewards Dad told me that he thought of that upperclassmen when I ran.

Since then we’ve had a couple track meets, and 2:54 is still my best time, but I’m doing pretty good. I run the anchor leg in the two mile relay, and every race my team has ran we’ve come in second, even at the invitational.

I guess Dad wasn’t crazy after all.