A friend of ours invited us to a race in memory of soldiers from Grant county who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq, among them our friend's cousin. The funds from the race go to raise money for scholarships. I thought it sounded like a good thing to be a part of and signed myself up to run the 5K. They also happened to have a kids run and I casually asked Cambel if he wanted to run it. His immediate response was "YES!" followed closely by "Will I win?" followed closely by a monologue on the merits of doing things even if you don't win, "because sometimes you will lose and things go on."
Once that was all settled, he started tracking the days until his race and assembling his running attire (which ended up being his Argentina soccer shirt and some Brazil soccer shorts that we got from a garage sale). Kevin bought him an inordinate amount of purple gatorade, and they discussed racing strategies. The one Cambel decided on was to "start slow and then run really fast when I can see the finish line." He went over this numerous times and included various arm motions to communicate his relative speeds throughout the race.
Race day dawned and Cambel was so excited. He got an official number and they lined the kids up and told them what every racer wants to hear: "The course is 500 yards. There is a sign to tell you to turn around. You can go to that sign or you can turn around before then. Whatever you want to do." With that they were off, and true to his plan Cambel covered the first 200 yards cautiously. But you should have seen him blazing through that last stretch, passing unsuspecting preschoolers left and right.
All the kids got medals and Cambel was proud to wear his. Immediately after his race, he chugged his gatorade and told us how much fun he had.
I am sure it was just as much fun for us to watch him. To be honest I teared up because it was just so cute and watching him as a little person experiencing something for the first time with so much joy and enthusiasm just makes my heart swell with how much I love him.
After I got through my little sentimental, emotional spell it was my turn to run. Unfortunately we were told to do the whole course and were not encouraged to turn around whenever we wanted. At about 2.5 miles I was really wishing I would have run the kids race instead.
But I survived and recovered enough to get a picture with my favorite 5 year old racer.
2 comments:
When I saw you had a new post up, my first thought was that it would be about the Mac saga. Glad the Mac has survived to document better days. Congrats to both you and Cambel! :)
This is great... however Cambe looks like he is about 8 in these pictures! It wasn't all that long ago that we saw you guys, but my goodness he looks tall!!!!
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