Beating one's own time or winning

We went to an NBHA in Cleburne Sunday. For some reason Dara doesn't like the outdoor arena. She entered the youth and the open. She usually carries her time over to the open, but she decided to ride in the open instead.

She had a smoking run for her...she ran a 17.8. The winning time was a 16.0...so she was just 1.1 off the fastest time. You can't even take a breath that quick. That is the fastest she's EVER run in the outdoor pen. When it came time to run in open, she ran a 18.1, and the winning time was a 16.1. That was only 2 seconds off the winning time. I know, I know, I know 2 seconds is a big gap especially in barrel racing.

The good part was that Molly Powell was there. I think she ran a 16.3 or 4. So that made Dara run only a little over a second slower, almost two seconds, than Molly. That in itself is a great accomplishment.

But the BIG thing was that she beat her all time fastest time. She normally runs a 19 or 20 in that pen. The difference you ask? She borrowed a shin guard from a friend. She told me that with the shin guard she didn't have to look down at the barrel and worry the whole time that she was going to smash her knee into it. All this time I refused to buy her some because I thought that would give her an excuse to not try to stay off the barrels. If I had known it would work I'd done it all long time ago. I'm going to try to upload the video that run for all to see.