hmmmmmmmmmmmmm
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
i don't know about this:
i've written on the topic of kids involved in endurance sports before:
my views on this have smoothed out somewhat since, but i still have some concerns.
i want to be clear that i think endurance sports, just like other sports and other forms of physical activity, is good for individuals on physical, mental, and spiritual levels--in fact, that's the entire point of this blog. and i think endurance sports should be encouraged and promoted for everyone regardless of age or background.
but i want to also be clear that endurance sports, just like other sports and other forms of physical activity, has issues that need to be addressed by anyone seeking to become involved. it has to be undertaken with an understanding of the risks involved. among these risks are the unique issues with young children.
too much of anything can be unhealthy. and "too much" to me is anything that induces debilitating long-term injuries, with the damage being physical, mental, or spiritual. just like i was concerned with an 8-year old running 2200 miles across China, i am concerned with 10 and 12-year-olds running marathons and contemplating ultra-marathons. what may be a moderate or painless to an adult may be difficult or injury-inducing to a child. what may be a mild or temporary injury to an adult may be severe or permanently debilitating to a child. the constitution of an adult is capable of sustaining more punishment than the constitution of a child. as a result, i think caution has to be exercised in any regimen involving physical volume or intensity upon children.
to the credit of the New York Times article, it does not that such caution does appear to be in effect, and so there is a difference between the case in the article and the case involving the 8-year old in China. the New York Times article references medical monitoring, input from doctors, and family discussions. all of which i can accept as good.
however, this brings up other concerns. first is the question of whether this sports interest is more about the child or more about the parent(s). the history of athletes driven more by their parents than themselves is not good. it reflects a dysfunctionality with parents invariably projecting their own interests upon their children, resulting in an impairment of the child and family. second is the question of burnout, in that undertaking too much of a activity too soon may lead to exhaustion and withdrawal from the activity. this is the kind of thing that athletes don't always see in themselves and so has to depend upon the perspectives of moderation held by 3rd parties--essentially, someone has to save athletes from themselves.
you can read the article for yourself and make your own decisions. in case the link doesn't work i've included the full text of the article below.
but like i said, while my views on the issue have smoothed out over time and i can accept most of what the kids in the article are doing, i'm still uncomfortable with the idea of any kid--and even anyone--deciding to load up and blitz themselves into ultra-distance endurance racing. i can accept that there are things that families can do to make it medically acceptable, and i can accept that it is statistically possible that there are genetically-endowed individuals who can do it. and yes, it's impressive. but still, i would be very cautious.
Young Endurance Runners Cause Cheers and Concerns
Barry Bearak
New York Times
November 3, 2012
HUNTSVILLE, Utah — The national championship trail run was held on a course both grueling and beautiful, more than 13 miles through the mountains near the Great Salt Lake. Most of it was an unrelenting up-and-down, the path often hugging ridges along a steep plunge, curling through a forest of scrub oak, white pine and red maple. The elevation hit a lung-busting 7,300 feet.
Barry Bearak
New York Times
November 3, 2012
HUNTSVILLE, Utah — The national championship trail run was held on a course both grueling and beautiful, more than 13 miles through the mountains near the Great Salt Lake. Most of it was an unrelenting up-and-down, the path often hugging ridges along a steep plunge, curling through a forest of scrub oak, white pine and red maple. The elevation hit a lung-busting 7,300 feet.
The race began in the parking lot of a ski lodge, and there was reason to do a double take as hundreds of men and women gathered near the starting line. In the front row, among some of America’s best endurance runners, were two scrawny girls barely tall enough to reach the elbows of the others.
From afar, they looked like twin pixies, Tinker Bell One and Tinker Bell Two, though the sisters were actually two years apart. Kaytlynn, 12, and Heather, 10, had long blond hair tied back with elastic, and the younger girl had a tiny stuffed animal — a raccoon — pinned to the front of her sports bra. Each of them weighed about 60 pounds. Their thighs were not much bigger than saucers, and the full loop of their hips was only 21 inches.
These children sweetened the scene with a dollop of cuteness, but curious onlookers were unsure whether to be intrigued or appalled. The trail’s ascent was an exhausting slog, and the precarious downhill required careful balance as swift feet inevitably slid on the loose and stony ground. The dry, thin air could suck the strength out of even the fittest runners.
Were these girls really capable of competing with elite athletes? And even if they were, was it a good idea for children this young to be in a race this tough?
The announcer certainly made a fuss over them. Kaytlynn and Heather Welsch were from Alvin, Tex., he said, happily promising, “These girls aren’t just here to run; they’re here to win.”
Kaytlynn maneuvered herself into a spot at the starting line next to Max King, 32, who had won the race four years in a row and placed sixth in the steeplechase at this year’s United States Olympic trials. The girl’s father had told her she needed to start out fast with the best of the men. “Don’t you get caught way in the back,” he admonished her. “Run out front, run smart.”
King was astonished to be standing beside someone so tiny. Kaytlynn was only 4 feet 5 inches. Towering above her to the left was the broad-shouldered B. J. Christenson, a champion triathlete from Utah. He stood 6-7.
The race traditionally begins with an explosion from a small cannon. “Cover your ears,” King advised the girl. But Kaytlynn simply stared straight ahead, her angular jaw locked tight. She leaned forward with her left hand cupped around her left knee, ready for a quick first step with the right.
The announcer yet again delighted in the sight of the blond sprites at the front. “Good gosh, look out for the Welsch sisters,” he called out cheerfully.
Then the cannon blasted with an enormous boom.
Uncommon Endurance
During the previous two years, Kaytlynn had competed in more than 90 endurance events, about a dozen more than her little sister. Some were children’s races of modest distances, but most often they covered mileage meant to challenge adults. Kaytlynn had finished two marathons. Both girls competed in triathlons, an amalgam of limb-exhausting skills where they typically swam 500 meters, cycled 13 miles and ended with a 3.1-mile run.
The sisters were better on their feet than in the water or on bikes. And they preferred trail runs to road races, bored with long jaunts on city streets. “All you see is house, house, lamppost, lamppost,” Kaytlynn complained.
For them, running trails along rivers and ravines was the most fun, though they sometimes fretted they would be lost in the woods or attacked by a bear. The fear was like something out of a children’s story, half imaginary and half real.
“Kaytlynn thinks there’s a giant sea monster at the bottom of every lake,” her younger sister said, and both girls giggled.
The championship race in Utah was organized by Xterra, a company that puts on a popular series of trail runs and triathlons. A month before, in late August, Kaytlynn won the women’s division of a major 13-mile Xterra race through Cameron Park in Waco, Tex. Heather finished third.
Will Ross, an event co-director, said he had never seen the girls before, and he recalled chuckling as they darted out in front. Soon they would come to Jacob’s Ladder, a 100-foot ascent on steep and uneven steps. Some of those stairs were thigh-high on these girls, and Ross was used to watching foolhardy runners jack-rabbit to the top only to use themselves up and pay for it later.
But the girls ran with the steady motion of metronomes. Some of the men passed them later, but the favorite among the women, Claudia Spooner, caught up to Heather only at Mile 5 and finished two minutes behind Kaytlynn.
“I was astounded they could run like that,” Spooner said.
A 13-mile trail run is much harder than a half-marathon, its road race equivalent. The course in Waco swoops and twists through cedar groves and bamboo forests, passing along limestone cliffs above the Brazos River. Although loose dirt is easier on the legs than pavement, the trail presents the ankle-twisting hazards of rocks and bulging roots and fallen branches.
Runners needed to be wary and spry, and this favors seasoned athletes. Women often peak in their 30s or even 40s. Spooner, 42, had won the Cameron Park race in 2010 and placed second in 2011. A triathlete and a coach, she said she felt conflicted about these “beautiful but teeny girls.” They were smaller than her 8-year-old son, and she would never put him in such a race. It was too hard on young bodies, she said. It could harm their growth.
Afterward, Spooner spoke to the girls’ father, who said they had driven to Waco from the junior national triathlon championships in Ohio. She sized him up as a pushy sort, a distance-running version of a Little League dad. “He told me he’d been very hard on the older girl” for finishing only sixth in Ohio, Spooner recalled. “I said, ‘Really, is it that big a deal? She’s 12.’ ”
Kaytlynn’s win in Waco was celebrated on Outside magazine’s Web site. The headline called her a “12-year-old trail running phenom,” and the story provoked a long string of comments on Twitter. Many readers found the girls awesome and inspiring, but others predicted trouble for their developing bodies and an early burnout of their competitive fire. Wayward parenting was mentioned.
The Welsches were familiar with such rebukes. Kaytlynn said, “Sometimes in a race, people will say ‘good job,’ but a lot tell me I shouldn’t be running and I’m going to hurt myself.”
Heather added, “They don’t like it when we pass them up, and some of them say the ‘s’ word.”
Niki Welsch, the girls’ mother, said the online carping made her feel sick. She wondered why some folks were so sure of the best way to raise other people’s children. “I thought about answering them,” she said. “But I decided: these people don’t know us. They’re on the outside and can’t see the inside.”
A Quiet Home Life
Rodney Welsch, 42, the girls’ father, is an analytical chemist for a company that makes plastics used in containers and wrappings. “Basically, we make garbage because that’s where it ends up,” he said in his half-jesting way. Niki, also 42, works weekends as a registered nurse for hospice patients.
The Welsches’ house is in a quiet neighborhood in Alvin, 25 miles southeast of Houston. The girls each have a bedroom. Stuffed animals and trophies and medals are positioned just so. Kaytlynn is also a consistent winner at science fairs. Rodney and Niki expect their daughters, one in seventh grade, the other in fifth, to keep at least a 93 average in each subject at school.
A large treadmill sits beside the sofa in the family room. Television has been banished from the house, though the girls are not in a pop culture lockdown. Kaytlynn has an iPhone, Heather an iPad.
“Who are you Facebooking with now?” Rodney asks Kaytlynn when her thumbs are hyperactive on her phone.
“Friends,” she replies.
“Which friends?”
“Friends I know.”
The origin of the girls’ running prowess is portrayed as a genetic mystery.
Both parents are athletic, but neither was any kind of star. Rodney played high school soccer, and his coach forced the team to run cross-country. “But I never won a ribbon, never even placed,” he said.
The Welsches enjoy the outdoors — camping, hiking, biking — and they wanted their two children to be active in sports. Kaytlynn tried soccer, basketball, gymnastics and softball, but none of them captured her heart. Her puny size often placed her at a disadvantage. “During soccer, people would run right over me like I was the ball,” Kaytlynn said. In school, some kids called her “midget.” If she wore green, they called her “leprechaun.”
Kaytlynn was 8 when Rodney read something in a magazine about children’s triathlons sponsored by the Kiwanis Club. Competitors could be as young as 7. The distances were not very long.
Rodney thought Kaytlynn would enjoy it, which she did, sort of. Early on, she was not only undersize but underequipped. She had neither goggles nor a swim cap for the pool. She pedaled a clunky single-speed bicycle.
Kaytlynn wanted a chance to win, so the Welsches gave her swimming lessons and bought her a faster bike, first a three-speed, then an eight-speed. Her performance improved, though it was only in the running that she truly excelled, passing others one by one as they struggled toward the finish line.
In 2010, Rodney began entering his daughters in road races: 1K, 5K, even 10K. They usually beat anyone their age and outran most women in their 20s and 30s. He wondered if his daughters were “some kind of endurance freak kids,” and late that year, he entered them in a half-marathon.
The girls handled the 13 miles well enough, but the more memorable part of the day came afterward. A woman introduced herself as a pediatrician and gave Rodney a scolding. Your daughters shouldn’t be running in events this difficult, she told him. Don’t you know you’re hurting your kids?
Unsettled by that berating, the Welsches began researching the risks of running and took the girls to a series of doctors. A podiatrist and an orthopedist checked their bones and joints. An endocrinologist said that although the girls were small, their growth patterns were perfectly normal.
The Welsches nevertheless remained cautious. Kaytlynn and Heather were taken to a doctor whenever they complained of pain. Dr. Daniel O’Neill, a Houston orthopedist specializing in sports medicine, has seen them repeatedly for aches common in young athletes. He has treated them with anti-inflammatories and has recommended strengthening exercises.
O’Neill, like Dr. Mark Sands, the girls’ podiatrist, said there was no medical reason to keep the sisters from running as they did.
“You have to evaluate every case one by one, but these girls are monitored for injuries, and their parents watch their nutrition,” Sands said. “Running has no more risks for them than for anyone else.”
He added: “And the girls really love it. You can tell by how they talk.”
Triumphs and Sacrifices
Kaytlynn and Heather, though two years apart, were both born June 28. The older girl is the more serious of the two. “For some reason, running is really fun, even though it hurts sometimes,” Kaytlynn said. “I enjoy it. I can go on and on without getting tired. It makes a purpose in my life.”
There are drawbacks, she realizes: “Kids at school tell me: ‘Man, Kaytlynn, you’re no fun. You never come over on the weekend; you can’t spend the night.’ And I say, ‘I have races on the weekend, so of course I can’t spend the night.’ I don’t have that many friends at school because of that reason.”
In January, after Kaytlynn completed the Houston Marathon, there was an announcement at school congratulating her. She had covered the distance in 3 hours 45 minutes 15 seconds, the second-best time that day for female runners younger than 19.
A few days later, some kids discovered that her name was not listed in the marathon’s official results. “They called me a liar,” Kaytlynn said.
Actually, her name had been expunged because she was later disqualified. Rodney had finessed her registration. The minimum age was 12, and Kaytlynn was only 11. “I guess a lot of people complained I was too young and I was going to break my bones,” she said.
Age minimums at endurance races vary. Runners must be at least 18 to enter the New York City Marathon, but more than 500 runners younger than that finished this year’s Los Angeles Marathon. The youngest was 9.
In triathlons and trail runs, age requirements are often set by the race director. However, many of them leave the decision to parents as long as the mother or the father signs a waiver of responsibility.
Dr. Mininder S. Kocher, an expert on sports medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, said there was not enough solid research to make across-the-board judgments about children and endurance events. Certainly, there are risks when children put stress on their growth plates, he said. This can lead to long-term consequences. Distance running can also delay the onset of puberty in girls.
“But there are cases when kids compete at a high level in endurance sports and come through it just fine,” Kocher said.
Dr. W. Douglas B. Hiller, an orthopedic surgeon at North Hawaii Community Hospital, expressed reservations. “In general, kids should stick to kids distances and then race at adult distances when they are adults,” said Hiller, who has been the chief medical officer for the triathlon at the Olympics.
But he, too, said there were exceptions. The distances run by the Welsch girls sounded “excessive” to him. “But if these kids feel it’s a mission to do this and they aren’t having adverse effects, I guess it’s O.K.,” he said. “Bottom line: I wouldn’t recommend it, but I wouldn’t forbid it, either.”
Medical issues are not the only concerns. “I always ask: What is this doing to the child psychologically and socially?” said the psychologist Daniel Gould, the director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University. “Parents can get kids to do most anything at young ages.”
So there is this: Who wants it more, the grown-ups or the children?
But that’s not so easy to tell.
‘Too Much Talent to Quit’
If the girls wanted to quit, “that’d be O.K.,” Niki Welsch said without hesitation.
Rodney did not seem so sure. “Kaytlynn has too much talent to quit,” he said. Besides, the girls say one thing one day and another thing the next.
“Kaytlynn said she wanted to quit the triathlon, and I said, ‘You’re not quitting, you need to stay with it,’ ” Rodney recalled. “Two months later, after she gets a new bike, she says, ‘I love the triathlon now.’ ”
Niki agreed: children go through phases. “We know the girls well enough,” she said. “We can tell when they’re just having a bad day.”
The girls do not train much on weekdays but usually compete in one endurance event, and often two, on the weekends. They may run a 10K on Saturday and follow that with a triathlon on Sunday.
Because Niki works weekends, Rodney takes the girls to their races. Events occur all over Texas, and sometimes, that means a middle-of-the-night departure, with Rodney at the wheel of the family pickup and the girls, in pajamas, asleep in the back seat, buried beneath blankets.
So much needs to be remembered: socks, shirts, sweat pants, fresh fruit, rapid-power energy gels, glutamine-fortified recovery drinks. Heather needs her stuffed animals — Raccoon, Skunk, Beaver, Owl and Squirrel. She carries them in a knit casing that looks like a knotty tree trunk. These are her furry amulets. She pins one to her shirt in each race, and that animal, she says, cheers her on as she runs and sticks out its tongue at other competitors.
Heather sometimes cries during races. She looks miserable. “People assume I don’t want to run and my parents are forcing me,” she said. “That’s not it at all. Sometimes, when people pass me, I get frustrated and start crying.” Rodney suggests she repeat the words “go go go” whenever she feels tearful. “If you’re crying, you can’t breathe right,” he tells her.
The Welsches own 100 acres in the country, and Rodney would like to build a house there and tend his pomegranate orchard. But there is little time for that.
Instead, he has become a student of the art of running, or at least the coaching of it. By necessity, he has also turned himself into a skilled bicycle mechanic. Kaytlynn’s bike was bought on eBay for $945, but he rebuilt it for more speed — changing the rims, shifters, crank set and handlebars — while spending about $5,500. Heather’s bike, a gift from Santa Claus, is worth about the same.
The girls are natural rivals. Kaytlynn will never let Heather beat her, and Rodney wishes the older girl felt as competitive against everyone else. He says she never pushes herself to the limit, never finishes a race with a strong kick. His assessment: “Kaytlynn is 100 percent talent and Heather is 100 percent hard work.”
Rodney’s coaching style includes what could be called low-intensity nagging. Before a race, he dispenses favorite aphorisms: Remember, quiet feet. Swing your arms. Let momentum do the work. Listen to your good voice. Don’t let your mind ruin things for your body.
These instructions are repeated without harshness, and the advice is so repetitive, it is unclear how much the girls pay attention. Yet they obviously adore their father, climbing on him as if he were a personal set of monkey bars. They leap into his arms, sure he will catch them and twirl them around.
During a race, Rodney moves about frenetically, running to places where the girls can hear his shouts. He is lean and fit. Once, as he rode a bike along a trail, some competitors suggested he get off his rear end and run beside his daughters. That tickled him. “I said, ‘I could try, but I’d be 10 miles behind.’ ”
The Xterra trail run in Waco offered Rodney a motivational opportunity. He told Kaytlynn that if she finished first, he would take the girls to the biggest race of their young lives, all the way to Utah for the national championship.
Mishap Before the Race
The flight to Salt Lake City was only the second time the girls had been on an airplane. They bickered about who sat beside the window, and even trips to the lavatory were an adventure. Heather had to hang onto the sink when the air became bumpy. She was startled by the whoosh of the toilet.
Snowbasin, a ski resort at the foot of tree-lined mountains near Ogden, was the setting for the race. The late September chill was repainting the landscape. Russet and amber blended into the many shades of green.
The day before the race, Rodney and the girls scoped out the course, walking partway up a mountainside beneath the gondolas of a lift ride. The trail narrowed into a path through the woodland that looked like a setting for Hansel and Gretel. “When you get to those switchbacks, you need to bank off the side,” he said. “Do you understand what a switchback is? It’s a Z.”
But the girls were not entirely focused on the race. “Look, Daddy, I’m a turtle,” Heather said, slowly munching on a leaf. Kaytlynn made a careful selection of the fallen foliage and fashioned it into a laurel for her hair.
On the way back, in a burst of exuberance, Kaytlynn took off down a steep service road, each of her footfalls a slap on the ground that kicked up dust. She was running fast, then faster, then too fast. To brake, she grabbed at a plant on the roadside and slid on her rump into a small boulder.
The awkward landing left her with a stubbed big toe on her right foot. It was red and swollen on the sides and a mix of colors at the nail. It ached and throbbed.
That evening, Kaytlynn spoke to her mother on the phone. Niki told her that if she didn’t want to run the race, she didn’t have to. Rodney had said the same.
“It feels fine enough,” Kaytlynn said, perhaps trying to convince herself.
Trouble in the Mountains
The race was to begin at 9 a.m., and the Welsches arrived at Snowbasin two hours early. Rodney made the girls an endurance-runner’s breakfast, mixing a drink with powdered “energy fuel.” Kaytlynn tolerates the concoctions and Heather hates them. The younger girl mostly nibbled on an apple Danish.
Competitors were required to wear bibs with their assigned number, but the flaps were too wide to fit across the girls’ chests, and Rodney instead pinned them in a semicircle around their hips. Heather also needed her stuffed squirrel fastened near her collarbone. “You’re putting a pin through its head,” Heather snapped at her dad as he worked at this tailoring.
“You should’ve taken Owl,” Rodney said. “Owl pins easier than Squirrel.”
The girls warmed up with a minimum amount of prancing. Kaytlynn had cushioned her bad toe with a bandage and some clear tape. Still, it bothered her, and she strode with a slight limp, which Rodney found alarming.
“You can’t favor it, or you’ll hurt yourself everywhere else,” he warned.
Rodney hoped she would forget about the troublesome toe once the race began. “She’s not hurt,” he told Niki over the phone. “It’s not a knee or an ankle. She just has pain, and she’ll deal with pain.”
Kaytlynn dutifully edged her way to the front at the starting line, and after the cannon blast, she started fast, but her stride was not as smooth as usual. Within seconds a few dozen runners, including several women, passed her.
The course led into the mountains at a steep 12 percent grade, higher than the maximum incline on most treadmills. Kaytlynn’s face was contorted into a grimace as each step further sapped her strength. The toe obviously hurt. Runners went by her as if they were attached to a faster pulley.
While watching Kaytlynn’s disappointing start, Rodney had lost sight of Heather. She was hopelessly behind and already weeping. Her left knee and right arm were bloody. Someone had stepped on her foot at the starting line. She tumbled to the pavement among a thicket of moving legs.
The runners soon disappeared into the forest, but the route later brought them into a clearing at the four-mile mark. Rodney hastened up a grassy slope to be there when the girls circled by. Kaytlynn was already behind about 20 women, but her stride had evened. She was bounding along, bad toe and all.
“C’mon, this is downhill; you know how to run it,” Rodney shouted.
He then waited for Heather. She emerged from the trees three minutes later, and when she saw her father, she stopped, and her weeping erupted into a wail. “I fell down, Daddy,” she cried. “I’m bleeding. I need stitches.”
Rodney looked her over carefully. Skin had been scraped away, but the wounds were not deep. “You don’t need stitches,” he told her, trying to be soothing.
Then he asked, “You want out?”
“No,” she said.
“Decide right now. You can’t cry and run at the same time. Do you want to run or not?”
“Yes,” she answered and again followed the trail into the woods.
The day, once so promising, now seemed cursed by some double whammy of pratfalls. Rodney shook his head. He had hoped Kaytlynn’s willpower would triumph over a bad toe. But even if it didn’t, he thought she might run a great race anyway just to stay ahead of her sister.
He sighed, “There goes my Plan B.”
Gritting It Out
From the clearing at the four-mile mark the trail again went uphill, not as steep as before but a clamp on the legs nonetheless. The sun had clawed its way through a cloudy sky. Dust lifted off the ground, caking around moist lips so that each runner looked to have eaten a chocolate Popsicle.
Kimberley Hefner, 38, a personal trainer from South Carolina, ran with Kaytlynn for about a half-hour, the two runners small enough to stride shoulder to shoulder on the tight path. “You’re doing an amazing job,” the older woman said. “You are kicking butt and taking names.”
Hefner was as talkative as the 12-year-old was taciturn. Once a terrific young runner herself, she seized an opportunity to caution Kaytlynn about the dangers of teenage partying.
“Don’t go boy crazy,” she said. “Plenty of time for that later.”
“That’s what my dad says,” Kaytlynn replied.
Hefner finally pulled away as the trail neared its highest elevation, a rocky promontory with a mesmerizing view. The altitude had a chokehold on Kaytlynn by then, and she had stopped before reaching the peak and stood hunched over like a question mark. Carlyn Peterson, a 29-year-old ultrarunner, caught up to the exhausted girl. Her attitude about endurance was: the pain never goes away, so you just have to make room for it.
She slapped Kaytlynn on the bottom and said, “You’re fine, keep going.”
She did. The rest of the way was mostly downhill, some of it on scary switchbacks that leaned into the ridge. Tammy Tabeek, 52, an accomplished cyclist and runner, pulled even with Kaytlynn on that descent, and the two speedily wended their way together, passing others.
Kaytlynn, weary as she was, looked strong as the course came to an end in the valley, where a crowd was gathered. Amplified music pulsed through the air. As Kaytlynn ran through the chute at the finish, the announcer said, “Oh, my goodness, this girl just ran more than 13 miles.”
Heads turned. There was robust applause. Many people were amazed at the grit of this spindly girl, and some wanted to touch her. “You killed it, kid!” one man said as he approached. “Give me a high-five!”
Kaytlynn, of course, thought differently. She had expected to be among the top five women and perhaps the winner. Instead she finished 30th among the 75 female runners — and 111th over all. Her time of 2:08:29 meant her pace was two minutes per mile slower than in Waco.
“I did horrible today,” she said disconsolately, her chin against her chest. “I didn’t know altitude would make it this hard. My throat hurt real bad. I couldn’t breathe. My thighs ached. And my toe, it hurt, too.”
Rodney had waited along the trail to root for Heather on the final stretch. She came in 57th among the women at 2:23:28. Rodney wanted to get her to the medical tent to tend to her blood-caked abrasions. Concerned though he was, he still sneaked in some affectionate needling. “You must have stopped somewhere along the way,” he told Heather. “Either that or you were walking.”
He had a similar pinch of sarcasm for Kaytlynn: “Didn’t we talk about this? Are you supposed to follow people or pass them?”
Rodney made sure the girls were rehydrated. He inspected Kaytlynn’s toe and helped her and Heather into some warmer clothing. They were soon ready to leave but felt obligated to stay for the awards ceremony.
The girls had finished one-two in the 14-and-under age group. Kaytlynn was awarded a blue ribbon, Heather a red one. “Look at these two young ladies,” the announcer said gleefully as they mounted the steps of a podium.
Of course, they were the only two girls under 14 entered in the race. In fact, they were the only ones under 19 — and two of the only four under 24.
In the rental car, heading to the airport, Heather was again her cheerful self. She laughed about her tears. “I kept telling myself, ‘Don’t cry, don’t cry,’ but all these people were running by me,” she said.
They drove past sights they had happily marveled at a day before: a waterfall, a row of apple trees, a series of twisting ducts that looked like a roller coaster. But the mood was different now. Rodney looked at Kaytlynn through the rearview mirror. Her thumbs were busy on her phone.
“You quit on us today,” he said.
“No, I didn’t,” she responded.
“Yes, you did. A lot of people run with a stubbed toe, even a broken toe. They put it aside and do their best. Did you do your best?”
“Yes.”
“Your time shows you certainly didn’t.”
Deep down she believed he was right, and she kept her eyes on her phone.
Heading to Hawaii
Back home, a podiatrist examined the toe. Nothing was broken, though there was a possibility of a hairline fracture. Just in case, Kaytlynn did not resume racing until two weeks later, and she began recording some of her best times.
Last Sunday, the girls ran a half-marathon through the streets of Houston. The temperature was only 41 degrees. With Halloween so close, Heather insisted on running in her Pocahontas costume, but her older sister was all business, even pulling off the shirt she wore for warmth.
Kaytlynn’s pace was so fast, Rodney cautioned her to slow down, but she maintained her same long, swift strides. To Rodney, it was as if she were saying, “Hey, Dad, look what I can do.” She finished in 1:28:39 — five and a half minutes faster than her personal record.
That sealed it, Rodney decided. In December, he would take the girls to Oahu in Hawaii. They would go up against the very best, running along serpentine paths through steep mountainsides at the Xterra trail run world championship.
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