The Olympian

So this is just awesome, and weird, and incredible.

A girl I raced against in high school is heading to Bejing in the 100 hurdles. She has the fastest U.S. time after last night's qualifying rounds. She's amazing.

So it's just kind of weird. We were honestly always within a few hundredths of a second from each other. You can see in the picture, this was the story of our co-existence in high school track. She was a great runner, very natural. Whenever we would be heading to a track meet I'd ask my mom (one of our track coaches) if Roosevelt was going to be there. I hoped they would (because I did love running against her despite her winning record over me) and hoped they wouldn't (it was a lot more fun to say I won the 100 meter dash).

Those were the days when she ran both the open 100 and the hurdles, and since I didn't compete in the hurdles I would often tease her about her loving the hurdles because she had no competition in that (which she didn't, and still doesn't for the most part obviously). I tell myself I was the reason she stopped doing the open 100...makes sense, right?

Anyway, it was freaking awesome to watch her run on NBC last night. It was a pipe dream for us some 8 years ago and now it's her reality, now that's just cool. What was even cooler was I watched an old competitor and cheered her on with my husband, and three kids. Though a part of me wonders if I ever could've gotten there, I wouldn't trade my life right now for all the gold in China.

But I still hold on to the fact that she told me I was the fastest white girl she's ever seen.


How sweet is this picture? It was on the front page of the Des Moines Register's Sports Section. Click on it to make it bigger. Yes, I flare my nostrils when I'm running. Whatever it's cool.