Dream Come True:  Running on the Blue

Adam is one of the most diehard BSU football fans I know.  Seriously, the kid can accurately quote scores from games that happened three years ago, and he pretty much knows the entire roster by heart.  We do not hold Bronco season tickets, but Mike usually manages to take the boys to a game every season or so.  Imagine Adam's thrill when he learned that he would be running the Boise Relays at BSU!!  Truthfully, while he was excited to run in the 4 x 800-meter relay, he was most excited about warming up on the blue turf.

Friday was a day that I wished I had a super telephoto lens.  I love my camera (and its reasonably impressive zoom), but Friday was a day I wanted one of those megalenses that the newspaper photographers have.  That way I could have captured the look of sheer joy on his face as he was sprinting down the middle of the blue field, getting warmed up for his race.  This was the best I could do at capturing the blue:


Here he is waiting to get on the track to receive the baton.
He ran the third leg.



Coming down the homestretch on lap #2. . . almost there!



I'm not sure if Adam has even thought of a "bucket list" yet, but it's pretty cool when you can cross something off of it when you're fourteen years old.  Boise State is planning on moving its track to another facility within the next year or two, so this may have been his last shot at running there.  Pretty cool day!


P.S.  His team finished 6th out of 10, not bad for a team with two freshmen, a sophomore, and a senior.

Not Again!

One of my biggest fears in raising children is when the time comes for me to hand the car keys to them.  It's kind of difficult, in a selfish way, to watch my kids become more independent.  However, the hardest part of giving car keys to my offspring is knowing that they have the potential to be in an accident.  Fortunately, my three oldest have been very good, attentive drivers, at least when they are around me.  (I'm not naive enough to think that they've never done anything risky.)  Unfortunately, Matt sometimes seems to have a magnet on the car when he drives.  Witness:

He's been in a couple of other fender benders.  He got drilled in the high school parking lot by a teenage girl who wasn't paying a whole lot of attention.  Not surprising. I expected at least one of our children to get in a mishap in the school parking lot because I've driven in a high school parking lot.  Enough said.  That crunch was pretty easily fixed, and we even allowed the father of the girl to take care of it without insurance getting involved so that her rates wouldn't go through the roof.

In December 2008, Matt was driving home from school one day and was stopped at a light.  He looked up in his rearview mirror and saw a car approaching.  It just kept coming and coming and coming.  Matt said it was a pretty helpless feeling.  Fortunately, the guy did slow down a little and swerve to the left before rear-ending our little white Civic.  Fixing the damage would have cost more than the car was worth, so we took the insurance settlement and purchased the above blue Civic.  I guess it stayed pretty nice for over two years. . .

Anyway, Mike and Matt have been talking with the insurance company over the past two weeks, and while we have yet to hear anything concrete, we are hopeful.  Matt wasn't cited in the accident--someone was trying to sneak through a couple of lanes of through traffic and t-boned him in the turn lane--and we think the other driver did get a ticket.  We shall see. . .

I did realize a few days after he had the accident that a car is a just car and can be replaced or fixed.  Two days after he was in his crash, the 16-year-old son of one of the doctors I work with was killed in a one-car rollover.  I'm thinking his parents wouldn't have minded replacing or repairing the car a hundred times over if they could just have their son back.  Kinda helped me put things in perspective.  Last but not least, Adam starts driver's ed next month.  Buckle up!

Barrier Busted

Track season is well underway here in Boise.  Adam has run in three meets so far, and he missed one because of a sore knee.  The first couple of meets were typical for Idaho spring track--cold, blustery, rainy, windy, and generally miserable.  Seriously, I was secretly wishing that we could return to the cross country season where there's just one race to watch.  If it's yucky weatherwise, at least we only have to shiver for 20 minutes or so.  In track the 1600 is run near the beginning of the meet, and the 3200 is at the end. This can make for a long, uncomfortable afternoon. Fortunately, we finally got a decent day on Thursday.  This track meet was going to be fun!

Adam, up until Thursday, has had kind of a mediocre track season.  He just hasn't seemed to be himself on the track.  He's been too uptight and tentative and, in his words, was "thinking about it too much."  So last week he decided to simply run and let everything else, time and placement, take care of itself.  I told him at the beginning of the season, "If you have fun when you run, then you've won."  What I wanted to tell him was, "Just run, boy!"



This is one of Adam's typical expressions before a race.
It's hard for me to see him so stressed.  Just have fun, son!!



By the time the gun goes off, he's usually much more focused and less stressed.

Happily, on Thursday he did just that: he simply ran.  He's been wanting to break the five-minute mile barrier for a while now but just hadn't been able to quite bust through.  That blessed day came on Thursday.  I can't explain it adequately, but he just looked different on the track.  He ran 4:57.53, about five seconds faster than his personal record, and even though it was just a matter of a few seconds, I rejoiced.  He finally looked like he was having fun.  He was running with abandon and loving the experience.  Victory!

I got a couple of pictures of the race that tell more of a story than I realized they would.  Adam has had two good running friends since he started cross country in the fall:  Micah, a sophomore, and Austin, a senior.  Both of them have taken him under their wing and really helped him to develop as a runner.  They both wanted him to break five minutes almost as much as he wanted it for himself.  As a mother, I've been tremendously grateful that he has found good friends that help to build his confidence.

Austin is in the grey sweatshirt behind the hurdles.  He is WILLILNG
Adam on to the finish line and shouting his time.  He's been a great
 example and support to Adam.  He's off to BYU this fall.

Micah is in the white shirt.  He, too, is well aware of the time and is
cheering like mad to get Adam to the line in under five.  You can see
on his face that he knows Adam's going to do it.

Several years ago, we promised Adam that we'd take him to Angell's, one of the nicer restaurants here in town, if he were to break the five-minute barrier. He reminded us of that after the race and made us pay up.  So, last night we went out for a really nice meal.  It was a lot of fun, me sitting there with my three boys/men and just enjoying their company.  I adore my family, and I especially love when one of them meets a long-time goal.  Good job, little man!