You can just forget about 23, because I don’t think it has a chance. Kelly has her sights set on breaking 23 minutes for her 5K run, and based on yesterday’s run of 23 min 17 sec, her trend to keep breaking personal best, and the way she tends to just keep improving, 23 doesn’t have a chance. In fact, Kelly spends more time talking about 22.

Saturday was Kelly’s second meet and third “official” time of this year’s cross-country season (including the qualifying trial race.) To letter, this year as a sophomore, she has to break 23 minutes. As a freshman, you may recall, she had to break 23:30 and did it in the “Run of Her Life“. The problem for this meet is she woke up sick Friday morning, could hardly eat, and stayed home all day. I was surprised she even wanted to wake up Saturday morning and run. My hope was she would just finish.

Not only did she finish, she lost a shoe sprinting down the last stretch to pass a girl, and achieved another personal best of 23:17. She was surprised, because she did not feel well and was worried while running that she was not running her best.

Kelly’s other goal is to achieve Varsity status, which she also did in her last meet last year. Varsity is defined as the top 20 runners. She is currently around #23 (not to be confused with 23 minutes.)

Go Kelly!