She got her leg wrapped and I prayed that she'd make it through one more run without the fracture becoming a break. She was really nervous because she knew it was her last chance to beat the time.
Her coach set up the course and had another girl run with her to help her set her pace. She started really well and hit the first mile mark at about 7 minutes. She needed to finish the 2nd mile in less than 15 to make her time. The closest she came to her letter time previous to this day was 22:45 (1 minute over) and she had a split of 15:30 on the 2nd mile that run.
She hit the 2nd mile at about 14:50 which was great, but she had to keep her pace up to finish in time. It looked like she slowed a little bit early on the 3rd mile so her coach kept yelling encouragements and telling her to hurry up. You could see her pace pick up when he told her to, so it was really helpful to have him pushing her.
She was coming around the last field near the end of the 3 mile course and had a minute left before going over the time limit to letter. I watched the stopwatch count away her time and I knew it was going to be close. I was so worried she was just going to miss it and I knew she would be SO disappointed. She came around the last corner with about 20 seconds left and ran as hard as she could. She crossed the finish line with a time of 21:39, just 6 seconds under the varsity letter time.
It was a stressful 20 minutes for me, but she pulled it off! She ran really really well and now will be an athlete with varsity letters in 3 different sports. Her leg was sore afterward, and she was exhausted (and sick) but I'm very happy that she'll get rewarded for it. And now we can let her leg heal because she started water polo practice in the pool the next day.
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