Claire and Annabel survive amazing Mile race at Cougar Field and remain friends!

Post date: Jan 18, 2013 2:50:28 AM

March 2011?

Those "in the know" were all abuzz about the showdown which occurred during Thursday's middle school track meet at Cougar Field. The girl's mile featured three of what must be among the finest distaff middle school distance runners in the Bay Area: Claire Inman (MLK, Raptor!), Annabel DriuSsi (AMS--ditto) and Annie Booth (MLK). Claire has been posting some stunning times and is undefeated in league meets this season in both the 800 and mile. Annie finished second to the legendary "Mary O" from Joaquin Moraga in the league XC championships last season. Annabel? Well, we know Annabel. Annabel is awesome. She must have like ten pounds of award hardware she's won in just the past year, including (but certainly not limited to) two first woman awards from Brazen races!

Annabel before the race. Each of the girls came up to me at various times to tell me how nervous they were and how scared of the other two. This was fairly serious stuff!

The first lap. Close!

So the gun went off and the first lap was as close and tense as possible. The three girls were glued together and already pulling out a huge lead on the rest of the field. Annabel (as she told me later) was keeping up with little problem but then realized "This is only the first lap." She decided to slow just a tad and BOOM, Annie was past her. From this point Claire began to open up just the tinniest of gaps but it grew just enough for her to win with a 5:43, which ties her PR. Annie came across next with a new PR of 5:50 and Annabel tied her PR with a 5:58. Incredible. As I told the girls at Raptors this morning I very much doubt if there were many middle school girl's miles in the entire US of A last week that featured three sub-six miles.

Awww. I really really like this picture!

So, pretty cool! And, as you can see, these girls compete hard on the track but they are sportsman (sportswonen? sportspeople?) in that they stay best of buddies once the race is over.