She Made It!

We got to the Ateneo a little past 6 that Sunday morning.  The 12 and under girls are scheduled to go at 8am, so J had more than enough time to have her body marked, slather on sun block and even chat with her team mates.  Unlike her recent soccer competition, she now listened to the voice of experience and ate the piece of banana her coach handed her. 

Here she is waiting for the go mark.

I was happy with her performance in the pool.  She showed some quick-thinking as she moved diagonally to the next lane after touching the wall to cut time.  I noticed that the other first-timers touched the wall and moved parallel to the wall to shift lanes. 

She needs a lot of work to improve her transition time.  The task of taking off her goggles and swim cap, tying on her laces took her over 2 minutes.  It did her well that she had the good sense to put on her singlet while she was moving to the run leg of the race;  this shaved off a few seconds from her finish time.

Sorry for the bad quality of the photos below.  I want to post them, still,  because they show so much of who she is...  being able to laugh at a time when others would quickly despair.  I love it that she finds time to smile as she desperately struggled to put on her over-sized singlet.  Although she got a size small already, it was obviously still too big for her; the sleeves and length dwarfing her lithe frame. 

For the sake of recording her performance for future reference...  Her race stats are:  400m swim: 9min 15 sec; transition: 2min 23sec; 3k run:  25min 05sec.  Total race time:  36min 43sec.  It's not a spectacular finish, but she is very happy to have participated in it.  I am so proud of her for finishing it!

She made it!