Misadventures of the Mack Family: LCPL Creager Memorial 5K

My boys ran their third race today.

In my last post I talked about Justice's Crazy. Crazy is capitalized because I'm using it as a noun right now. I told you all about how he freaks out and cries and acts like a fool while he's running and during a race.

I decided to try a different approach with Justice to try and deal with the anxiety he has about running. I sat him down, and we read some scriptures together. We read from the book of Isaiah.

Isaiah 41:10

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

Isaiah 40:29-31

He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Justice is a really spiritual kid. I don't know why I didn't try and take this route with him before, but I was glad that I did. I could tell it helped him. As we read the scriptures, he cried his eyes out. We prayed together and I told him when he was running and didn't think he could keep going that his Heavenly Father would take him the rest of the way. That he was strong enough for the both of them.

He and his Dad prayed before the race together, and they had another prayer with all the runners before the race started.

And a very short distance after the race started, it happened. The inevitable. Justice was running faster than his Dad. His Dad told him to go ahead in front of him and run. And The Coach said he took off and ran like he's never seen him run before. No whining, no complaining, and no tears.

I was waiting at the finish line for them. There was a miserable wind blowing, so I figured it would slow them down. The first few runners crossed the line and all said that the headwind was horrible on one particular stretch of the race and it was a "slow run". So I figured they'd head in around 24 or 25 minutes and just started fooling around with these two.

And this cute little feller.

Then the wind really picked up. The finish line blew over. I had a good view of the final stretch and was waiting for The Coach and Justice to round that corner. Although it was far away, I knew I could pick them out because they were running together. I saw a little kid round that corner by himself and he was flying down that home stretch. I thought "uh-oh", that kid is fast. No chance of Justice beating him. And then he got close to the finish line and I thought:

"Oh ****, that's JUSTICE!"

And everything happened really fast after that.

I scrambled to get a picture. Dang it! You can barely see his bright blue shoe and his tiny face in between the dude with the khaki pants on and the guy with the beanie winter hat.

And you see that cooler? The long white one? That's where Justice got to before he puked. The military guys that had finished before him really were awesome to him. They were high fiving him and got him some water. One of them told him:

"OORAH! That's right son, you laid it all out there today, GREAT JOB!"

And at that particular moment, I noticed that he was smiling. Smiling hard. Even after he puked everywhere, he had nothing but an ear to ear grin on his face. No crying. No sign of a tear.

And no sign of The Coach. I panicked.

Me: "WHERE'S YOUR DAD??!!??"

Justice: "I left him Mama. He's coming!"

Me: "Is he hurt? What happened?"

Justice: "Nothing. I was just faster than him. He told me to go ahead right after we started."

And he smiled again. And I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Thankfully, the anxiety and tears were nowhere to be found. But the day that I've been dreading was finally here. Justice finished in 22:48, and his Dad rolled in behind him at 23:44.

I was ready for his Dad to cross, so I got a much better picture.

And then I got worried again. He ran through the finish line, they gave him his card and he disappeared. Was he sad? Upset? Hurt? It was a good ten minutes before we found him again. I clearly over-thought the entire situation, because he simply said:

"I'm fine, I had to use the bathroom!".

Of course he did. He's not nearly as deep as I think he is sometimes.

OK, then I was about to cry. I'm so sad for his Dad. I decided to give him a pep talk about Justice finally being faster.

Me: "I know today is tough, losing your running buddy after all these years."

Joe, looking at me like I'm three shades of crazy: "You're kidding me, right?. This is the best day of my life. That dude drives me NUTS out there, all that complaining and whining and crying. I get to run with headphones and music now!"

And then he does this little dance. And he was dead-serious. I was worried for nothing. But he was REALLY HAPPY for Justice and SO proud of him for laying it all out there today.

Justice won first place in his age group. There were a whole bunch of kids running this time, too. Good for him.

And The Coach won second place in his age group! Yay!!!

The awards were super cool. They had dog-tags made. One tag had the award title on it, and the other had the name and date of the race. Justice was all over it, he loved it.