Samantha had a cross country meet on Friday (I like to call them track meets because it bothers her). This whole cross country thing seems a little out-of-character for Samantha, but we never thought she would latch on to basketball either. Anyway, I asked her before the meet what her goal was for the 3-mile run. She told me "26 minutes", which was slower than the last time I watched her run. When I gave her a hard time about it, she just smiled.

I've never watched a cross country meet before. It's kind of like watching a golf tournament, in that you have to move around the course. The difference is that sometimes you have to run if you want to catch a glimpse of the racers as they go by. The course at Tigard made several loops around an through a park. There were lots of trees, so most of the time you couldn't see them, then all of the sudden they would come out of the trees and go running by.

At the start, Samantha ran up to the front and was in about 10th place when we lost sight of her. Here is a photo of the start, good luck spotting Samantha in the crowd.


At the first spectator point where we could see her, she had dropped back to about 20th, but she was looking good and running strong. I was worried that she was going to gas, and kind of surprised that she was being so aggressive.

At the second point, she had moved up a little bit and was still looking good.

As she came around for the finish, she was in 16th place. She finished very strong and didn't let anyone pass her. I was amazed that she did so well. She ended up with a time of about 23:10 for 3 miles.