Her Name is Speedney Gonzalez

So........Syd continues to impress the socks out of us. You all remember her biathlon race right ?(see previous post) . Tuesday our friend Gary (Kirrah's dad, the ones who invited Syd to the biathlon in Kona) called Tuesday and said that there was to be a small 1.5 mile cross country race down by the bayfront fields on Wednesday at 3 and was wondering if Syd would like to run in it. It was for two other schools but there should be no problem in letting her run in it (the other schools were Haili Christian and Christian Liberty, Kirrah has been training with Christian Liberty this year while she is home schooled).

At first Syd said, sure why not. But then yesterday (the day of the race) she said she didn't feel like it but that she would like to go down there and cheer for Kirrah. So we went there at 3, the boys race was under way and all the girls were warming up and stretching for the race (about 15 girls, grades 6th - 9th). Syd was wearing cutoff jeans, a tank top and her flip-flops. We get there and Gary asks her if she wants to run, to which she politely declines, saying no thanks. He kept insisting and she kept refusing (other girls are still warming up and stretching). Boys race is over and they call the girls to the start line, as they await for the start of the race, Gary tells her one last time "come on Syd, just take your shoes off and run barefoot", so she said: uh, Ok.......

She gets in the start line, they send them off, and right from the start she's tagging along the two girls in the front of the group (Kirrah was one of them). At the half mile mark, Kirrah drops out due to severe side-pain, and Syd was going to sit out with her but Gary told her to keep on going. So she kept on tagging along with the leading girl as the two of them started to put a significant distance between them and the rest of the group. On the way back, the last quarter mile Syd starts to speed up and leave the other girls behind, but soon slows down until the other girl catches up. Here I thought "she ran out of gas" and then in the last 100yds she just took off like a bat out of hell in a fierce sprint with the other girl.

She came in first place, 0.38s ahead of the second place (a girl who had won last week's meet) both of them about a minute ahead of the third place......

Here she is at the finish line:

Darn kid didn't even break a sweat.......

I asked her if she had ran out of gas there in the last quarter mile and she said:

"no, actually I could've gone faster all the way from the beginning, but I didn't know what the course was....same at the end, I let the other girl catch up so I would know which way to go.." oh, well.....

She's been invited next week to another race.....