We had a busy weekend at the Auckland children's athletics championships in Papakura.
The early starts both days were horrifying -- we even had to leave home while it was still dark on Saturday!
Mulan competed both days, while Miya's events were all on Saturday (Miya chose to miss her music lessons on Saturday, but wanted to do her gymnastics class on Sunday).
Miya did awesomely well, with three new PBs in her three events, and two medals!
1200m walk: Miya decided, just for fun, to try out the 1200m race walk. She'd never done it before, and we didn't have any coaches to give advice, so we watched a few YouTube videos to get some tips. On Thursday, Miya did a practice walk on the grass track, completing it in 10min30sec. So, we decided the aim was to try to get under 10 minutes.
Amazingly, Miya did it in 9:02.42! Awesome effort for her first time, and she got a silver medal.
Discus: Miya's discus gets better every time, and she got a new PB of 17.12m, to earn her 9th place.
High jump: Finally, Miya had an awesome end to the day, with an incredible series of high jumps.
We'd had a practice session on Friday on grass, tidying up her runup. In practice she surpassed her competition PB of 1.13m, getting 1.15m or so. We decided that a 1.15m to 1.20m on the rubber would be a good goal.
And then in competition everything clicked perfectly. Miya cleared 1.05m, 1.10m, 1.13m, 1.16m, 1.19m and a huge 1.22m. She was pretty close at 1.25m.
It was a huge delight that she got 3rd, and deservedly earned herself a bronze medal. (Second place also jumped 1.22m, but beat Miya on countback.)
A huge congratulations to Miya!! Two individual Auckland championship medals!
Mulan competed in four events across the two days, with satisfyingly solid performances in all of them and one new PB.
80m hurdles: We knew that the other four competitors in Mulan's grade were super-fast, so the aim was to simply run her own race and try for a good time. In the end, the 1.4m/s head wind made things tough, but Mulan's time was still a solid 15.36sec, earning her 5th place. A satisfying final hurdles race of the season.
Discus: For Mulan, anything over 20m is great, so her 20.32m was very satisfying, especially considering it was done under pressure in her final throw after having got two no throws.
Long jump: This is Mulan's strongest event (after triple jump), and the one that she was especially wanting to do well in. In this competition the top six jumpers after three jumps got another three jumps, so Mulan's main aim was to be top six.
Happily, Mulan's 4.24m ranked her 5th, and she got three more jumps. Her 6th and final jump was a good improvement at 4.32m, earning her 5th place overall.
Equally importantly, Mulan was very reliable with her six jumps -- her worst jump was still a very good 4.17m.
(While the top three jumpers deservedly earned their medals, they were ranked in the wrong order. The long jump officials weren't very observant, and the gold and silver jumps were actually toe-over-the-board no jumps. Third place should have got the gold medal.)
400m: Mulan's final event was the 400m. It's always a tough event, and I hugely admire Mulan for the effort -- the last 30m or so her legs tired badly. But awesome run and a new PB of 1:11.06.
We plan on doing a little bit of 400m training -- with a bit of preparation Mulan should be able to get under 1:10.
Mulan's performances were all really encouraging, looking forwards to her big end-of-season competition in under two weeks. She's in the Auckland team for the New Zealand Interprovincial competition, and will do long jump, discus, shot put and 400m. Good luck Mulan!
The result are here:
Saturday track (Mulan 13G 80m hurdles; Miya 10G 1200m walk)
Saturday field (Mulan 13G discus; Miya 10G discus; Miya 10G high jump)
Sunday track (Mulan 13G 400m)
Sunday field (Mulan 13G long jump)
