Photo of the day: Tristan winning

You might remember that Tristan has turned out to be quite the track star. Out of the blue in Grade 6 he showed a previously unrevealed talent for sprints, and in Grade 7 was asked to compete in the track and field pentathlon: 100m and 800m races, shotput, long jump and high jump. He placed well in the running events in last year’s meet, but struggled with the field events.

As track season rolled around again, Tristan came in first in his grade in the tryouts for 100m and 200m, and other races. Through the year, he had said that he was not interested in doing the pentathlon again this year. “I don’t so much like to throw things. I like to go fast!” As they worked through the high jump tryouts, it took days of patience as the other kids were slowly eliminated and Tristan kept clearing the bar at 115cm, 125cm, 130cm. (For comparison sake, at 5’8″ I am just over 170cm tall.) Despite this, I was still surprised when he came home and said he agreed to compete in the pentathlon again. He’d only had one long jump practice, and hadn’t even touched a shotput during his school tryouts.

The track meet was blustery and cold for a June day, and Beloved and I huddled in layers of clothes and blankets to cheer him on. He warmed us to the core, though, when out of the gate he won his heat and came in second overall in the first event, the 100m race.

Tristan winning

See that face, on my boy in the outside lane? That face says, “Hell yes I just won this race!”

In the end, he didn’t place in the top three in the field of 16 or so competitors and didn’t get a medal. He did what he said he would do, though. He went fast. Really fast! If he can just show up with no practice and run like the wind, I can’t wait to see what will happen if he follows up on his idle idea of going out for track in high school next year and actually putting some training behind him. Stay tuned – I’m guessing though this is the last elementary track meet for Tristan, it might be only the beginning of his running career.

Author: DaniGirl

Canadian. storyteller, photographer, mom to 3. Professional dilettante.

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