It might be difficult to pin young track stars down, but Young Observer caught up with KPMG Bermuda Invitational Mile middle school winners Kyrah Scraders and Paul Smith, both attending Dellwood Middle School, during their lunch break this week.Both 13 years of age and in the same year group, M3, the two youngsters have another thing in common: both won the Invitational Mile on Front Street for the second time this year. Paul took his first Mile crown in 2009, while Kyra led the pack in 2010.Kyra, who trains with Pacers Track Club under the tutelage of Cal Simons, has been running since she was seven years old.“My momma went to Sports Day when I was in P2 at Northlands. I came first in my race, so she thought to put me in a track club,” Kyra explained.She has been with Pacers ever since and trains at the National Stadium twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 4.30 and 6pm. Coach Simons’ training has made a difference to her performance, she said: “I got faster, got better times. I’m breaking records.”Preferring the shorter 400, 800 and 1,500-metre events, Kyra is not too keen on cross-country running; in fact, the Front Street Mile is the only cross-country event she really likes to run.“There are a lot of people there,” Kyra explained. “It makes me faster. My whole family is there. It makes me happy ‘cos they can see what I really do. You feel lots of people are rooting for you.”Distance running “runs in the family,” declared Paul Smith. “My momma, Georgina Liburd, was a good track and field star in the 800 and 1,500 [races].”Paul won his first Telford Mile when he was five years old and has been running ever since. He has run the Front Street Mile three times, and won it twice, in 2009 and again in 2011.He trains with the Flyers Track Club and coaches Mike and Donna Watson on Mondays, Wednesdays, and, starting this week, Thursdays from 5.30 to 7pm. That, and schoolwork, doesn’t leave much spare time, but he also manages to play basketball for his school.Confident in an understated way, Paul described the experience of breaking the tape: “It feels like my training came in handy. I didn’t let myself down.”The Front Street Mile, “can be tricky”, he explained as it falls somewhere between track and field and cross-country events: the distance is shorter than the usual cross-country race, but the variations in the grade make in more challenging than the flat running in a stadium.And then there is the atmosphere of the event: “The crowd gets pretty hyped,” Paul noted, “but I don’t let it get to me. Some people start out too fast, but I use strategy and just run my race.”The energy of the crowd is infectious he admitted. “Running the home stretch, coming to the finish, everyone’s screaming. The crowd just brings me home faster.”Running, Paul, believes will take him far. “Running can take you places,” he declared, “all around the world. You can experience different things.”In fact, he hopes running will take him through college as far as the Olympics, whence he will “bring home the first gold for Bermuda.”