A Super Taper

The last few weeks have been hectic. Daughter has started school with mixed success; She is learning Danish at a decent pace and has made friends in school. The way she was born here but grew up in America makes her a little exotic, which helps. I have instructed the girls to tell her to speak Danish, whenever she uses English words. When I pick her up in the afternoon, two or three girls come up to tell me how much English she has spoken.

On the flip side, she fell off a slide and broke her front tooth. Stupidly, I forgot to pack her gym clothes last week; I had forgotten how even second graders take showers here. That was just one of maybe ten little things that showed her that we are not super-parents.

This weekend, we had two races. Saturday, we had a 4x5K relay. We have been running much less than normally this last month. I didn't know what to expect, but fared quite well. I got low 16s and the Girl got high 18s. The race was a little short, though. I got to run the first leg and probably took it a little too easy. I was way in front and cruising when I saw the 4K sign and realized it was almost over.

Our team got beaten by ten seconds! The winning team opened with one of their slower runners but slowly caught back up. The Girl, running the third leg, got passed 200 yards before the finish by their third guy. It turned out he handed off to a woman, which meant that not only had we lost our overall lead; we had lost the lead in the mixed division. There were nice money prizes, so this was a little depressing. Our fourth guy caught the woman, passed her, and she hung on. She ended up leaving him with a few K to go. Oh well, we had a good time. Maybe next year.

Then today, we ran a 14K trail race. It was probably the most beautiful course I have ever run on. I ran in a group of 4, holding back a little bit as I didn't know how the back-to-back races would treat me. The legs got really good with 5 miles to go and I decided to go it alone. I got 52 minutes, which I am happy with on that course.

The Girl got beaten pretty badly, however. There was one other woman there, who looked like she could remotely beat her and it turned out she was very fast. She ran it in 55 minutes, beating the Girl by 4 minutes. Still, the Girl's time was good, especially after the race yesterday, where she solidly PRd, even taking into account the short course.

We are looking good for Transalpine. Once in a while, the delusion that we can compete for the win enters my mind. The Girl is in great shape and, of course, she is the key factor. But I feel pretty good, too, and I will be the one pushing her, encouraging her, running ahead to fill up bottles etc. It definitely will be fun.