Lia's 1st Track Meet of the Season

Lia finally ran in her first track meet this spring after a very nontraditional start to her track season this school year.  Since her high school musical overlapped with the beginning of the track season by four weeks, Lia was able to arrange with her coach to miss the first two weeks of practice and then to attend a short practice the third and fourth week when her musical rehearsals and performances moved to the evenings.  It was a crazy two weeks as Lia ran after school every day and then raced home for about half an hour to eat dinner before dashing back to school from 5 to 10 pm for Bye Bye Birdie.  We arranged for Lia to skip early morning seminary during this two week period, and she caught up with her homework on the weekends since she did not have the time to work on it each night after getting home around 10:15.  I am so proud of Lia for getting through these exhausting two weeks.  

Starting on March 25th, Lia was able to start going to her daily track practices while "only" juggling Mean Girls rehearsals on Tuesday and Thursdays evenings and Matilda and Mean Girls rehearsals on Saturdays.  After reaching ten practices, Lia was finally able to compete in her first track meet.  Unfortunately, the next two meets on the calendar were invitationals that Lia had to qualify for by running in a previous meet.  As a result, Lia was not able to race in these two meets.  So, she had to wait until today to finally race against Graham Kapowsin High School in Spanaway.  Luckily, the day turned out to be a chilly, but sunny, day, so Lia did not have to run in the rain like so many of her other track meets in the past.  Not feeling quite ready to run the mile, Lia opted to run the 800 with several of her other long-distance running friends and Emmett and I enjoyed being able to cheer her on from the side of the track.  She did a great job and ran it in 3:04 which I think is a great start to her track season.  Good job, Lia!

Lia and the rest of the girls taking off from the starting line.

Lia rounding the corner at the beginning of the 800.

Lia running past Emmett and me.

Lia racing past us with a bunch of other girls from high school.

Lia passing us on her second lap.

Lia racing to the finish line.

Lia giving her long-distance coach a high 5 after completing her race.

Of all of the wonderful friends that Lia has made these past three years running XC and track, Hope is the closest friend that she has met.  We all absolutely adore her and I am so grateful that Lia had the chance to meet her during the 2022 XC season.  Here are these two buddies posing for me after their race was over.