12-year-old girl accidentally runs half marathon instead of 5k

ROCHESTER -- A young girl in Upstate New York is winning praise for turning a mistake into a mission.

12-year-old Lee Rodriguez Espada accidentally accomplished something most adults never do.

Lee signed up to take part in her first 5k in Rochester over the weekend.

The problem is she got in the wrong group in at the start line, something she only realized several miles in, when she asked another runner how much farther the finish line was.

She was told she was actually running a half marathon - 13 miles instead of the the 3 miles she'd trained for.

But Lee kept on going.

Lee's mother was initially panicked when her daughter never crossed the 5k finish line, but that panic very quickly turned to pride as she finished the additional 10 miles.