Crown Point 8-year-old completes half-marathon

HAMMOND | Crown Point 8-year-old Katarina Nikolovski has just competed and completed her first 13.1-mile race. So what was the toughest part of the journey?

"Trying to get around the people who were blocking my way," she said.

For Katarina, who on May 7 was obligated to start the Indianapolis One America Mini 500 Half-Marathon at the back of a pack of more than 35,000 runners, there were a lot of obstacles to negotiate. Nonetheless, she got around and passed most of them. Her father has visual proof.

"I knew there were going to be some people who wouldn't believe an eight-year-old could complete a half-marathon," Dushan Nikolovski said. "So I recorded it. I followed her on bike and tried to keep up in some stages on foot."

The footage, which is posted on YouTube, is impressive and somewhat amusing. Here is Katarina, no more than four-feet tall, zig-zagging her way amid winded adults like a downhill slalom skier. It wouldn't be a stretch to claim that Katarina may have ran an extra mile when factoring in all the weaving.

Katarina finished in two hours, 25 minutes. Not only did she, ahem, win her age group, but finished ahead of most of the field with an overall placing of 16,633.

"I thought it was going to be harder," said Katarina, who averaged a 9:18 mile throughout most of the race before slowing down near the end.

Katarina got interested in running when she saw her father participate in races, including several full marathons. She has been running competitively for a little more than a year, and set an age-group record at the 2010 Purdue University Calumet Fall-Frolic four-mile run. She also won her age group at the PUC Ramp Run 5K several weeks before the Indianapolis race.

"She may be a natural long-distance runner," her father said. "The way she runs here (referring to the video clip) is about the way she runs when she plays soccer. She's not really a fast runner, but a consistent one."

And a resilient one as well. After coming home from Indianapolis race, which featured a circuit around the famed track at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Katarina still had plenty of gas in the tank.

"I rode my bike and played on the trampoline the rest of the day," she said.