Good Day for Maria

Yesterday was a big day for Maria.  In the morning, she participated in the YMCA's indoor triathlon.  As you can tell from the results, not very many kids participated.  Regardless, Maria did very well.  The kids swam laps for 10 minutes, biked on a stationary bike for 20 minutes, and ran on a treadmill for 15 minutes.  Then they added up total mileage to compete.  As you can tell, Maria got edged by .02 seconds to come in 2nd place for the girls.  Swimming is usually her weak point at these triathlons because she doesn't have a pool to train in.  But she still did very well.  She came in 17th out of 22 total participants - adults and kids, and beat out two women!

Maria also had a good afternoon - she won the election for her 4-H club's "Historian."  The club has over 60 people in it, so its a pretty big election as far as clubs go.  She was running against two older girls but spoke so clearly and confidently when they gave their one minute speeches that she came off looking much better than the other two candidates.  I should also mention she winged her speech - she gave it some thought, but wrote nothing down ahead of time (just like Ben always does).  So her job consists of taking pictures and scrap-booking all events for the club. Luckily, she runs a committee of 10 people, because with a club of 60+ people who all show something at the fair, it will be impossible for her to get pictures of everyone.  I do think she and I will be spending quite a bit more time at the fair this year, though, because she is going to need to go to more events.  The club adviser told Maria that this committee fell apart last year (meaning they have no good scrapbook), so she's hoping Maria steps up and does a good job.  I'm confident that she will.