12-Year-Old Finishes Half-Marathon —by Mistake

LeeAdianez Rodriguez, known as Lee to those close to her, was running late and just made it Sunday to the start of the 5K race she had signed up for in Rochester, NY, the Democrat and Chronicle reports. But at some point during her run, the 12-year-old started wondering why the route seemed to be taking forever. At around the halfway point, she found out why, the AP notes: She had jumped into the wrong race and was running a half-marathon (13.1 miles) instead, about 10 more miles than she had planned.

Taking into account how many miles she had already put behind her—and not realizing her mom had alerted police when her daughter hadn't shown up at the 5K finish line—the sixth-grader decided to keep going and finished the race with a time of 2:43:31. That gave her 1,885th place out of 2,111 runners, but made her one of the youngest to pull off the feat. "I don't even know how she did it," her mom tells the paper. "I'm so proud of her." Lee only started training for the 5K about two months ago, WHEC notes. (A teen took a wrong turn during a Philly half-marathon—and ended up running a full one.)