5th Grade PE Competition

Over the past month, the kids at Justice's school have been training for the annual PE competition.  The kids get to try out for a spot in a particular race by being the fastest boy and girl in each class.  Justice typically earns a spot on the relay team, but over the past year his running style has evolved into more distance running than sprinting so he was able to get a spot racing in the 1-mile run.  He was extremely excited, and actually trained for it repeatedly over the past month or so.  I understand most kids just sort of take it with a grain of salt and get out there and have a good time, but Justice isn't one of those kids.   He takes these sort of things way too seriously and nearly made himself sick worrying about how well he would do.  He obviously gets that from The Coach, not from me.  I was just ready for it to be over with so we could get him back to normal around the house.  He's been obsessed with his diet, water intake and how many hours he's been sleeping for over a month now.  All that obsessing paid off, because he killed that race today and easily won first place.

Yesterday was the last "practice run", and he was happy with his time of 6:40.  And did I mention he ran that in church clothes?  And puked four times during the course of the run?  Yesterday was "Dress Your Best" day at school, which meant Justice was wearing a suit, tie and dress shoes for his last practice run.  He also had a HUGE and unbelievable lapse in judgement at lunch and drank some strawberry milk 30 minutes prior to running in the 82 degree weather.  Last night at parent teacher conferences the teacher told me he didn't skip a beat, didn't even stop to puke.  Just kept running and puking all the way around the track.  He was pretty proud of himself when he got home for not getting any puke on his suit and tie.  Gross.

Things got thrown off track today because of the weather.  It was 82 degrees yesterday afternoon, and a rainy 46 degrees today.  The kids have been practicing outside, and all of the sudden everything got moved into the gym today.  These sort of things make Justice's anxiety hit full-blown panic mode and I was sure he would be a mess.  Sure enough, I get to the gym and this is what I see:

Justice has no shame in his prayer game.  He will pray anywhere and in front of anybody if it strikes him to do so.   Getting a little prayer pep-talk from the Big Coach himself.

All lined up and ready to race.  

My dumb self brought my point and shoot instead of Joe's awesome camera, so of course all of my movement shots are blurry.  He was MOVING around this track.

There were two people ahead of him after the first lap, and when he turned the corner I told him to pick up the pace, and he just looked at me and shook his head, as if to say "I got this, don't worry".  And he did.  Both of the boys ahead of him slowed way down after the first two laps.

And here is where we ran into some serious problems.  The PE teacher counting the laps messed up his lap count because he was so far ahead of everyone else.  She told him he was finished, and he went out and sat down.  I knew he wasn't finished, I was counting his laps.  But I'm also sitting up high and can't get down there to tell them he wasn't finished.  The OTHER PE teacher scrambled over and told him he had to get back out there and run three more laps.  I was SO UPSET for this kid.  I mean really??    Thank goodness he had lapped everybody by three laps and had plenty of slack room.  He jumped back out there and ran his three more laps like a champ, and still beat everyone by a lap.

Almost at the finish line, for real this time.

Miss Eva Dale giving Justice some love after he finished.  She felt absolutely awful for messing up his lap count.  No harm done and everybody needs some Miss Eva Dale loving every once in a while.

Getting his medal

Clearly a very happy little boy.

And I will give you one guess who his number one fan is.  Jack yelled and clapped the entire race, and was so HAPPY when Justice won.  He cheered and cheered, yelling "That's my Bubbie right there!!!".  After the race was over, he asked Justice if he could touch his medal.  Justice did one better for him and let him wear it.  Best Bubbie ever.  

Way to go, Justice.  I'm happy for you in your accomplishment today, and I'm thankful you are the type of person that is so willing to put 110% effort into everything you do.  Hard work pays off, you proved that today without a doubt.