9 year old Kade Lovell has been a distance runner since he was just 18-months old when he ran his first 1K. So when the boy from St. Cloud, Minnesota was running the St. Francis Xavier Franny Flyer 5K recently and it seemed to be taking longer than usual, he knew something was up. And it turns out, a woman had told him to “keep going straight” toward the end of the 5k and he ended up in the 10K race by mistake.
"I was thinking 'this is a really long 5k'!" Then he saw a sign indicating that he was at the 7 kilometer mark. He knew his mom would be worried when he didn’t cross the 5K finish line, so that may have pushed him to run faster.
His mother began a panicked search. She drove the entire 5K route and was "bawling" when she received a call from her brother in law who had competed in the 10K. He said people were talking about the boy who had accidentally won their race and he thought it was probably Kade. He won in record time! 48 minutes, beating the 40-year-old second place runner by a full minute.
“I accidentally won it, and they’ve all been practicing for a long time,” says Kade. “I was just really surprised that I did that.”
His mom joked before the next competition, “I’ll stand at the 5K/10K mark and say, ‘Turn here!'”