Hardware!
Have I mentioned that my niece is a total rockstar lately? I have? Well, here’s one more example.
A few weeks back, somebody mentioned to my sister that they have triathlons for kids now. Just so happens, Hannah has been swimming and running competitively for a little while now, and like most kids, spends a huge percentage of her free time in the summers on her bicycle.
With that in mind, my sister signed my niece up for the next round of HFP Racing’s FIT Family Series, hosted at ARMCO Park in Warren County.
And then she got nervous. Not Hannah, of course. She approached the idea with all the ease and enthusiasm you’d expect from a kid her age. But my sister, being a mom, worried. Hannah had just started racing distance a few weeks earlier, and hadn’t been in a swim race since last season. So she threw together a quick training plan and went about trying to make Hannah as ready as she could be.
She needn’t have worried. Hannah blitzed right through each training session with astonishing ease, even for an active kid. She did laps at the pool like she’d never missed a day, ran in practice like she’d been doing it all her life, and of course she’s always been fast on her bicycle. A trait she gets from her uncle, I dare say.
But as the worry about Hannah’s readiness subsided, concerns over the weather rose. Saturday morning was dreary and wet, and scattered thunderstorms in the area threatened to scrap the whole affair. But the weather held off long enough for the races, and soon she was lining up at the dock for the swim leg.
Her 100m swim leg was a little slow, partially because of drifting off course for part of it. But she made it all up on the 5k bike, where she posted a time two and a half minutes faster than anyone in her class, and faster than most of the boys! Her half mile run was really solid, and her transitions quick enough to earn her the win in her age group!
A timing error meant that they awarded her a second place medal at the race, but the official results have her listed as the winner of the girls’ 9-year-old division. Great work all around, and a deeply impressive debut for our rookie Triathlette!
[…] involve the three most important girls in my life. My wife Katie, my sister Rebekah, and my niece Hannah are all talented athletes, hard workers, and beautiful people. As much time as I spend writing of […]