DNF to DNS

Are you familiar with DNF?  For racing fans, that would be recognized as "did not finish".  Unfortunately, that was the scenario with Robert and his cross country race this weekend.  I noticed when I saw him early in the race that he seemed to be struggling more than I expected him to be.  He looked okay when I saw him a bit later, but at the 1.5 mile mark I didn't see him at all.  When some of our less experienced and less athletic runners came by and he hadn't, I knew something was wrong.  Thomas pointed him out and I saw that he was with his coach, and appeared to be in distress.  I phoned Andrew who had gone past the 2 mile mark to see them and then I began walking towards Robert.  By this time, they had gotten a gator to him and it was heading towards medical.  The coach pointed me out to the driver and they stopped for me.  Turns out he had heat exhaustion.  He looked pretty bad when I first saw him in the gator, but by the time I got over to him at medical, he was starting to look much better.  He recovered quickly and for that I am very grateful.  We were all disappointed that no time was recorded, but obviously that is not the important issue.

After the race we drove further east to have dinner with Andrew's parents.  It was a very nice dinner and I could tell they were very grateful we had included them in our day.  Unfortunately as we were leaving, the DNS portion of our day happened.  This would be the exact opposite of DNF...it's a "did not start".  Andrew's parents car wouldn't start.  We aren't entirely certain what happened, but we gave the car a jump and they were on their way.  They had a full tank of gas an no need to stop until they were home, so we were cautiously optimistic they'd be okay.  We were glad to hear from them when they made it home.  At their ages, they just don't deal with adversity well anymore.

All in all, it was a very eventful day!  Yesterday was a day for my side of the family as we visited at a birthday party for a bit.  And of course today is the beginning of our first, full, crazy-as-ever week!