After my race in the moring, it started to rain. Steadily. For hours. When
it was time to head back to the course for the Kid's Race, it was raining hard
enough where Sheri, Daniel, and I thought we might just as well forget it, but
Derek would not be deterred. Maybe it was watching his Dad
win earlier that morning or maybe it was watching so many stages of the
Tour de France, but this kid wanted to race. We headed back into town.
The schedule said the Kid's Race would last 15 minutes, so I thought Derek
might do 3 or 4 laps of the course or more, but they grouped all the kids into
one race and it was just from the final corner to the finish line - about 400
meters. It was raining pretty good, so they elected to do that for safety reasons.
Oh well. Derek was staged in the second row, as kids lined the street from sidewalk
to sidewalk. He was behind a small girl on a smaller bike and there just wasn't
time to mess with such traffic. I waded into the field and told Derek to get
off his bike so that I could hoist it over my head and carry it to the front.
I found him an open spot and he staged on the front line.
They said go and Derek was up and sprinting for the line. He did most of the race standing up and finished in third place, just behind second and well clear of the rest of the field. He ended up taking a lap with some of the older riders and finishing the lap first. I don't know if they all knew that the race ended the first time they crossed the finish line.
When I caught up to Derek he wanted to ride some more, so we made another lap on the course as the pros were warming up. Derek then said to me, "Daddy, I think we should get back since I'll be on the podium. Will I get some prizes like you did?" They didn't have any of that for the Kid's Race, but they gave out ribbons to all the kids. I got Derek up on the podium to get a shot of him. He had a great time and plans to race more.