Give Me an Inch... I'll Take a Mile

Call me a cheat and a liar, but if I ran a race and finished in my best time ever, I don't think I'd point out to anyone that it was a wee bit shorter than it was supposed to be.

Not so with Carter. Who apparently has more scruples than me.

Today's cross country meet was in Stratford. Despite the fact that I left work early, hubby and I still arrived just as a the starting gun was going off. So we got out of the car and saw Carter run right past us. I just acted like we were standing there all along. (Of course, he didn't even notice anyway, so I am wasting my fib.)

Our team looked good. We had two guys finish in the top 15 and the other 3 were not that far behind. Today Carter finished 5th among his teammates but he had a personal-best time, so that meant everyone ahead of him had a really good time.

He didn't look particularly fast because his breathing was so labored due to a wicked cold (stuffed nose and sore throat) he's been fighting since Saturday. When I saw the finishing time, though, I saw the unexpectedly good result and told him, "Great job!"

Carter replies, "Well I can't really count it as a PR. The course was short by 100 meters."

Seriously? I say give me an inch and I'll take a mile! I know as a mother I should be happy he's being honest but I still think there's no harm in saying he ran the 5K in X amount of time. He insists, though, it was just a 4.9K.

No sense arguing since his coach is on the same page. It doesn't change the official timed results -- just what he uses as PR's to give the kids incentive to improve. On the plus side, even if time is added (in theory), Carter still beat his Stratford time from last year by at least 5 minutes.

That's amazing in my mind, but Carter's not happy with it. I guess that's a good thing. To quote my baseball crush Joe Mauer, "If you are content with anything, maybe it's time to get out of the game."

No risk of too much contentment around here.