State XC Meet

The State JV Cross Country meet was in Spanish Fork this year. My mom was spending the day with us while my Dad was at a conference. Grandma was excited to watch Rockwell run. Emilie and Matt came too, and it was great to see them!

Rockwell was excited and nervous for the meet, and really wanted to do well. He had a great start out in front of the pack.

I wasn't excited about leaving Tessa, Damon, and Grandma alone at the chairs, so Grandma and I just went to one spot along the trail to see Rockwell pass by. He had fallen behind a bit, but the kids all trade places many times throughout the 3.1 miles, so I didn't think much of it.

The next time I saw him was at the finish line. He was expected to place in the top 10 (let's be honest, top 5!) based on his time at the Region Meet. Quite a few boys came through the finish line, and Rockwell was nowhere in sight. Paul, Matt, and Emilie came running over and said he had fallen quite a ways behind and wasn't looking good. He finished with a time of 19:08.53. That's two and a half minutes slower than Region. Those two and a half minutes waiting for him to come through felt very long! I was worried he had an injury and was stuck somewhere. When we finally saw him coming in the last stretch, we could tell something was very wrong. The poor thing looked like he was in serious pain.

Coach Amanda and Paul ran right over to him when he crossed the line. It's always very crowded behind the finish line, so the rest of us stayed back at our chairs. Paul called after about 10 minutes and let me know that Rockwell couldn't catch a breath. For the last half of the race, he hadn't been able to get a full breath in or out. My mind (and Damon's, poor thing) went right to Drew and that made me very concerned. Paul took him over to the pavilion to try and see if sitting down and getting out of the crowds would help. We packed up our stuff and slowly made our way over there, and when we got there Rockwell told me he was feeling better. But I could still hear that he wasn't breathing fully. I simply was not comfortable leaving him like that, but he insisted he wanted to ride the bus home with the team. Paul and I agreed that Rockwell shouldn't be left alone, so Paul said he would stay and watch from a distance, and then follow the bus home. That made me feel better, but I was nervous until Rockwell got home. His breathing was back to normal, but he still took a long, steamy shower. We were talking later that day and I told him I was impressed with how well he was handling the results of the race. He is usually pretty hard on himself if he doesn't do his best. He said, "Ya, it turns out I care a lot more about breathing than I do about winning. That was really scary and I'm just really grateful I can breathe again." I have experienced what it feels like to have an asthmatic-type episode like that one time at the top of the Grand Canyon hike, and it truly is scary. I feel so bad that he went through that. Man am I grateful that he was able to get back to normal relatively quickly (even though it felt very long at the time!). I know things like that can end up very differently, and I'm so so so thankful that he is feeling better.