Alex is headed to the Regional's in the 400m
Despite a blister across the entire bottom of his left foot, Alex blasted through 
the 400m today to come within a hair of 1st place. He still qualified to move on the Regional's next week, but he would have liked to have won the District championship. The winner's time was 50.77 seconds and Alex's time was 50.83 seconds (that's seriously splittin' hairs). Both runners were a good 2.5 seconds ahead of the 3rd place finisher.
Alex admitted that he had a lot of energy left at the end of the race, but the blister on his foot had gotten worse during the run because of the heat of the Welcome Stadium track surface. That's something we'll have to consider for next week.
The blister took him out of the 200m race and he couldn't even compete. We 
watched the 200m race from the sideline, and Alex really had a chance based on what we saw. Oh well...maybe next year for the 200m.
So...we're headed to Regional's next week for the 400m only, and Alex has a great shot to get to State in that race. As I've noted before, the 400m is *his* race. He feels he should have beaten the kid today, and feels he had the energy just not the footing.
Next week starts getting tougher. He qualified for the Regional finals last year, and, guess what?, came in 5th due to -- tada -- blisters. He has a week to heal up and toughen up those feet. I told Meg we should consider making him walk on beds of hot coals to toughen up those feet. I don't think she agreed entirely.
Here's the video from today so you can see just how close the race was:
And, here's some more photos from District to leave you with:
