Izzy Barr, Running Star

by Claudia Mills

But the front office was closed. Kelsey tried the door, just in case. It was locked.

  “They’re just shoes,” Izzy said in a small voice.

  Just the beautiful new blue shoes with the silver arrows that her father had bought her because he knew she wanted them so badly. The shoes he would have seen her run in today if only she hadn’t told him she didn’t want him there.

  Most of the classroom doors were shut, lights turned off, teachers gone home for the three-day weekend. The only room that still had a teacher in it was Mrs. Molina’s. She probably couldn’t bear to leave until she had every last math paper graded.

  Kelsey and Annika led the way, Izzy following behind.

  Their teacher looked up from her desk, visibly surprised to see three of her students at school so late. She wasn’t grading math papers; she was reading through the stack of Famous Footprints.

  “The shoe tree is gone,” Annika began.

  “And we were wondering—” Kelsey said.

  “If you knew where they took the shoes,” Annika continued.

  “Because Izzy’s new shoes—”

  “Got left on the tree by mistake—”

  “Well, sort of by mistake—”

  “And Izzy needs them—”

  “For her big race—”

  “On Monday,” Annika finished.

  Mrs. Molina reached under her desk and held up a pair of brand-new blue-and-silver running shoes.

  “Are these your shoes, Izzy?”

  Izzy stared at them. Then she grabbed them from Mrs. Molina and hugged them to her chest.

  “I saw you were wearing your old shoes again,” Mrs. Molina said. “And then I saw these on the tree, and I thought maybe there had been some kind of mix-up.”

  Mrs. Molina did notice everything!

  The teacher smiled at Izzy, but then she turned back into strict, stern Mrs. Molina again.

  “I must say that in all my years of teaching, I have never had a class who had so much trouble keeping their shoes on their feet!”

  Izzy switched her shoes. She held out her old shoes to Mrs. Molina.

  “Is it too late to put them with the other shoes from the shoe tree?” she asked.

  “I will see that they get where they need to be,” Mrs. Molina told her.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Molina!” the girls chorused.

  “Good luck on Monday,” Mrs. Molina said. “Between Kelsey’s reading, Annika’s math, and your running, Izzy, the three of you have done a lot to make our class proud.”

  Grinning, the girls raced back to the car where Kelsey’s mother sat waiting, reading her book.

  “All set?” she asked them.

  They beamed in response.

  Izzy’s feet felt so much happier now.

  If only her heart could feel happier, too.

  12

  Izzy’s softball team played their championship game on Saturday morning despite gusty winds that threatened rain. Her mom was there to see Izzy hit one double and two singles. No home runs, but Izzy knew she couldn’t hit a home run in every game. She knew the Jayhawks couldn’t win every game, either. They lost this one, 12–10.

  “I hate that other team!” Kelsey said after she had come running up to hug Izzy.

  “I hate the umpire!” Annika said. “I think you were safe that one time when the umpire said you were out.”

  Kelsey and Annika didn’t understand about sports. Izzy didn’t hate the other team, or the umpire, or anybody. Her team had played their best. The other team had just played a little bit better.

  Her dad called them from the Western Slope midday to hear Izzy’s score and tell them that Dustin’s soccer team had won 3–2. Dustin had kicked the winning goal. They had decided to stay overnight to do some father-son sightseeing, and they’d be home Sunday evening.

  Izzy took one last training run on Saturday afternoon. Usually she did long weekend runs with her father or Dustin. This time she ran alone, around and around the few blocks of her little neighborhood.

  It had started raining, but Izzy loved to run in the rain. No one else was out except for some people walking dogs. Maybe the dogs also loved the rain. As she ran, Izzy lifted her face up to the sky to feel the cool drops streaming down her face like tears.

  Today she didn’t even bother to monitor her time and distance with Annika’s borrowed watch. Today she needed to think about something else.

  She had her running shoes back, thanks to Kelsey, Annika, and Mrs. Molina.

  Now she needed to fix things with her father. This time she had to do it all by herself.

  Wilma Rudolph had wanted to run without a brace, and she had done it. The hardest part, harder than all the intense years of training that followed, had been taking that very first step.

  Izzy needed to force herself to take the first step toward making things right with her dad. But how?

  * * *

  It rained hard all day Sunday. Izzy hadn’t planned to run anyway; it was good to rest the day before a race. Her mother drove her downtown to pick up her race packet, which contained her racing bib, timing tag for her shoe, and souvenir T-shirt. Izzy spent the rest of the afternoon admiring how they looked laid out on her bed.

  The house was quiet without her dad or Dustin. Izzy’s mother made spaghetti for supper. It was good to eat a lot of carbohydrates the night before a race, too.

  “Your father and Dustin don’t have much time together,” her mother said as they carried their plates to the table.

  “I know,” Izzy said.

  “It’s hard for Dustin having to live in two houses, without his dad during the week, without his mom during the weekend,” Izzy’s mother went on.

  “I know,” Izzy said again.

  And she did. She really did.

  * * *

  The morning of the race, it was still raining.

  “You don’t think they’ll cancel it, do you?” Izzy’s mother handed Izzy the breakfast she had requested: two scrambled eggs and one piece of toast. Izzy’s dad and Dustin were still asleep because they had gotten in so late the night before. Dustin was staying an extra day because of the holiday weekend.

  “Of course not!” Izzy said.

  One year Memorial Day had been swelteringly hot; another year it had been so windy that runners feared being blown off course. But the race was run in all kinds of weather. Tens of thousands of people came from all over just to run.

  Izzy’s mother was going to drop Izzy off at the start of the race and then come back later to the stadium, where the race came to an end. With a 10K race, people couldn’t watch you run the whole race unless they were running along with you. It wasn’t like a softball game, where you could sit in the bleachers and see the action from start to finish.

  Izzy couldn’t eat the rest of her eggs. Her stomach felt too jumpy and jittery to have eggy things bouncing around in it.

  She tightened the laces on her shoes.

  She strapped Annika’s watch onto her wrist and set the time and distance features.

  She tucked Kelsey’s note into the top of one of her socks: “Don’t look at any golden apples! Love, Kelsey.”

  Izzy knew she couldn’t expect her friends to be at the stadium to see her, not after they had already given up half of Saturday watching her softball game, and especially not in terrible weather like today. Kelsey would be at home cozily reading. Annika would be at home cozily doing sudoku or playing with her dog, Prime. It was one thing to run in the rain; it was another thing entirely to get soaked through to the skin watching someone else run.

  “Ready?” Izzy’s mother asked her.

  “Almost.”

  She took the note she had written for her father and put it on the kitchen table.

  Dear Daddy,

  Please come to my race. I want you to be there.

  Love,

  Izzy

  On the envelope she had written DADDY in big bold letters. There was no way he could miss seeing it.

  If he got up in time.
>
  She suddenly remembered how her father loved to sleep in sometimes on mornings he didn’t have to work.

  Maybe she should tell her mother, Don’t let Daddy sleep too late, but something stubborn in Izzy wouldn’t let her say it.

  She checked the envelope one last time to make sure it was right in the middle of the table, with the word DADDY facing up.

  “Okay,” she told her mother. “I’m ready now.”

  13

  The race was organized into “waves” of runners scheduled at different times, so that tens of thousands of runners wouldn’t be crammed together as they ran. The winners in each age group were the ones who finished with the fastest times, whichever wave they happened to be in. Izzy’s assigned wave was fairly early, starting at 7:30 a.m. No wonder her father and Dustin were still sleeping.

  Already there, in the same crowded wave of runners, Izzy found Mr. Tipton and Skipper. Except for the waves of the very fastest runners, who had to qualify with a time from a previous race, you were assigned a wave based on the time you had said on your registration form that you expected to finish. So Izzy knew that she and Skipper were going to be running together.

  Izzy fastened her timing tag on her shoe and forced herself to give Skipper a friendly smile. The other girl’s smile was decidedly chilly. But the rain was chilly, too.

  The race began.

  Izzy started off too quickly; she knew she had. It was so hard not to want to pull ahead of Skipper right away. But she wanted to be a strong-finishing Cody, not a petering-out Simon.

  She made herself slow down until Skipper and her dad had caught back up with her again.

  “Good job pacing yourself, Izzy,” Mr. Tipton told her.

  Izzy could tell that Skipper didn’t like it when her dad gave a compliment to his own daughter’s rival.

  Side by side, the three of them kept on running.

  Had Izzy’s dad gotten up in time to see her note?

  No! Izzy wasn’t going to be like Atalanta; this time she wasn’t going to let herself be distracted by anything.

  Last year Izzy had pounded past volunteers handing out cups of water and Gatorade, jugglers on unicycles, and cheering kids waving flags. She had thought the rain would keep the crowds away this year, but she saw plenty of people who didn’t seem to mind the weather. Still, Izzy was glad her friends weren’t huddled there shivering beneath dripping umbrellas.

  At each mile marker, she checked the time on Annika’s borrowed watch to make sure she was pacing herself correctly. She was actually running faster than she had planned—too fast? But she felt more confident, seeing Skipper and Mr. Tipton running right there beside her.

  Forty minutes into the race, Izzy’s feet still felt fine in her new running shoes. Her breath was steady; she didn’t feel winded the way she’d felt last year when she’d had to run in a later wave in the hot morning sun. Her calf muscles throbbed, and her side ached a bit. She hoped she wasn’t going to get a cramp just when she needed all her energy for a final spurt.

  Was it time? She wanted to step up her pace, but if indeed it was time to pull ahead, why wasn’t Mr. Tipton telling that to Skipper?

  They were nearing the stadium. Now had to be the moment for Izzy to make her move and pull ahead of Skipper. And it was also the moment for Skipper to make her move and pull ahead of Izzy.

  Her energy ebbing after running over six miles already, Izzy tried to pick up her pace and outdistance Skipper. But as she pushed herself to run faster, Skipper ran faster, too.

  Izzy could see the entrance to the stadium.

  Pretend you’re Wilma Rudolph!

  Pretend you’ve taken that heavy brace off your leg and now you can run, run, run, run, run!

  With a final burst of speed, Izzy took the lead. She didn’t glance back to see how big of a lead it was.

  Pretend your dad is running next to you!

  Pretend your dad is in the stadium waiting to see you win!

  Then Izzy stopped pretending to be anybody else but Izzy Barr, doing anything but running her very best all by herself. No longer tired, muscles no longer sore, Izzy sprinted through the tunnel into the stadium and crossed the finish line.

  Ahead of Skipper Tipton.

  She had done it.

  The rain didn’t feel cold and dreary now. It felt like a fountain spraying jets of celebration onto her upturned face.

  She turned around to shake Skipper’s hand, but Skipper was busy pulling her father away, obviously trying to avoid her. Apparently, Skipper Tipton needed some sportsmanship lessons from Simon Ellis.

  “Izzy!”

  Was that Mr. Tipton, calling after her?

  It was. “Great job, Izzy! You did Franklin School proud.”

  “Izzy!”

  She heard female voices calling her, too. She looked around to see where the cry had come from.

  “Over here!”

  Izzy saw them and started running—as if the 10K race had just begun—across the stadium, to where they had all come down on the field to wait for her: Annika, Kelsey, her mom, Dustin.

  And, with the biggest smile of all, her dad.

  Jumping up and down with excitement, Annika and Kelsey were holding up both ends of a huge, drooping, soggy banner that said, IZZY BARR, RUNNING STAR.

  “We made our first sign out of cardboard,” Kelsey said.

  “Before we knew it was going to be raining,” Annika chimed in.

  “So we had to make it again,” Kelsey continued.

  “Out of fabric,” Annika finished. “With waterproof markers so it wouldn’t run.”

  Actually, the letters had still gotten awfully streaked and blurry.

  Izzy thought they looked beautiful.

  “Great race, little sis!” Dustin said. “Man, you came zooming into the stadium like a flying squirrel!”

  Dustin wasn’t one for hugging, so he gave her a brotherly whack on the back.

  “You must be freezing,” Izzy’s mom said, sweeping her into a hug. Her mother was one for hugging. “Let’s get you into some warm, dry clothes, and then we can all go out and celebrate your fastest time ever.”

  It was true. Annika’s borrowed watch said Izzy had finished her race at 52:12, three minutes and six seconds faster than she had run that distance the year before.

  She wouldn’t know until the scores were posted online after the entire race was completed whether she had beaten every other girl in her age group. Right now she didn’t even care.

  She had beaten Skipper.

  And her father was there.

  When her mother released her, it was finally her father’s turn for a hug.

  “I should have come to see you hit the winning home run at your ball game,” he said into her ear. “And I should have checked again to see whether you really didn’t want me to come to Field Day. I was wrong both times, and I’m sorry.”

  “I shouldn’t have told you I didn’t want you to come,” Izzy said into his chest as he bent down his head to hear. “I always want you to come to everything!”

  “Well, now we can both do things the way we should,” he said. “Starting with a humongous, super-duper, big blowout celebration to end all celebrations! Where do you want to go?”

  “Home!” Izzy said, standing back and flinging her arms wide. “For sausages and pancakes, and more sausages and more pancakes. Can Kelsey and Annika come, too?”

  “You bet they can,” he said. “Sausages and pancakes coming right up!”

  Then Izzy and her father hugged each other again.

  Fun Running Facts

  Olympic running events come in many lengths, from the shortest (100 meters) to the longest (the marathon), and many lengths in between (200 meters, 400 meters, 800 meters, 1500 meters, 5000 meters, and 10,000 meters).

  The marathon race (26.2 miles) is named after the city of Marathon, Greece. Legend has it that in 490 B.C., a messenger ran from Marathon all the way to Athens to report on whether the Athenians had won or lost a great battle ag
ainst their enemies, the Persians. “Victory!” the messenger gasped out when he arrived. Then he collapsed and died. But no one knows if this is really true.

  Begun in 1897, the Boston Marathon is the world’s oldest continuous annual marathon. It is always held on Patriots’ Day in April, the date of the first battle of the American Revolution. In the 2014 Boston Marathon, the oldest runner to finish the course was eighty-one years old; the youngest runner was eighteen.

  Some races are over very quickly. The world record for the 100-meter dash is 9.58 seconds, set by Jamaican runner Usain Bolt. As famous runner Jesse Owens once said, “A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.”

  For decades people believed that no human runner could ever run a mile in under four minutes. But today the record for running a mile is held by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco, who ran a mile in just over 3 minutes and 43 seconds.

  44.6 million pairs of running shoes were sold in the United States in 2012, for a total of over three billion dollars in sales.

  The fastest running animal on earth is the cheetah, with recorded speeds up to seventy-five miles per hour, three times faster than a human being can run.

  Many people enjoy running with their dogs. Some of the most popular breeds for a running companion are border collie, dalmatian, Jack Russell terrier, and German shepherd.

  Acknowledgments

  I’m grateful for the chance to thank just a few of the people who helped Izzy run her race to publication. My brilliant editor, Margaret Ferguson, worked with me to shape the entire Franklin School Friends series from the beginning. Her penetrating editorial comments make every book I do with her immeasurably better. I received careful critique on early drafts from my longtime Boulder writing group (Marie DesJardin, Mary Peace Finley, Ann Whitehead Nagda, Leslie O’Kane, Phyllis Perry, and Elizabeth Wrenn). Wes Adams read the manuscript with the eyes of a runner and had many helpful suggestions that found their way into the book; Susan Dobinick’s editorial insights have been most welcome as well. Rob Shepperson’s absolutely darling illustrations are my own favorite part of each Franklin School Friends title.

  Thanks also to my wise and caring agent, Stephen Fraser; sharp-eyed copy editor Janet Renard; and Elizabeth H. Clark for the enormously appealing design of the entire series. Finally, my dear friend and accomplished marathoner Caolan MacMahon graciously answered all my questions about a runner’s training and discipline; she is my inspiration for Izzy’s joy in running.