Brett and Lydia's track highlights

I'm on a mission to get the blog through the summer months before we are into full-blown winter sports season. So here we go with track!

Initially, it looked like the Special Olympics would be holding a modified track season, but plans fell through when our delegation was unable to fulfill all of the covid protocols.  By this point, I was really looking for ANYTHING for Lydia in particular to do with some peers - since she had done online school the full year. So I signed her up for recreational track in a neighboring city.  They were in need of a coach for Lydia's age group, so Bryan inquired about volunteering.  During the conversation, he told the director about Brett and asked if he could also be a part of the team (it was supposed to be through 6th grade).  The director allowed Brett to join as a "team captain".

While the Special Olympics has lots of events for athletes to participate in, unified partners (non-disabled peers such as Lydia) only compete in the relay.  This year Lydia had the opportunity to try out and compete in many different track and field events.  Since she had just trained for and run the Frozen 5K, she did not shy away from the longer-distance runs like many kids her age do.  She enjoyed pushing herself in the 400m and 800m. 

By the 3rd of four meets, she was ready to give the 1500m a go, and she competed in that one at the last two meets.  Lydia does a great job of keeping some gas in the tank for the second half of the race, and that is where she would sometimes pass up her competition!

Brett loved trying all the different field events.  He was a consistent 100m and 200m dash runner.  I think his favorite was the relays.  He tried the 4x400m relay, but since he did very little 400m training, the distance was a little too much.  At the end of his leg of the race, he fell to the ground, exclaiming, "Long race! Long race!"  After that, he stuck with the 4x100m relay!

Lydia's personal bests:

400m - 1min 19.67sec

800m- 3min 20.5sec

1500m - 6min 44.22sec

Brett's personal best:

100m - 16.23sec