It's hard to compete with the inner strength of Craig Sager, who was discharged from the hospital on July 3 after a two-month battle with acute leukemia.
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But his son is coming close.
Sager Jr. ran in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Peachtree 10K Road Race on the Fourth of July, less than a day after donating 1.5 liters of bone marrow to his father, according to Journal-Constitution. Sager Jr. checked into Northside Hospital in Atlanta on Thursday at 7:30 a.m. on Thursday to have the marrow extracted through two holes in his back.
The transplant was one of the final steps in his father's recovery, according to the AJC.
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"I'd say the hardest part was walking from MARTA to the starting line," Sager Jr. said to the AJC. "We walked like two miles. ... Once I got loose and once I got to the three-mile mark it kind of got in the rhythm and went away but when I first got off MARTA and walked the two miles to get to the starting line I was not happy."
The son was under doctor's orders not to run, but chose to do it anyway. He was supposed to stay in the hospital overnight himself but left at 6 p.m., went home to go to sleep and get up for the race the next day.
The 25-year-old son still had his hospital identification bands on his right hand. He reported back to Northside Hospital for a post-race checkup and have the bandages in his back removed.
Friday's race represented the first time in 32 years that the elder Sager did not run in the race. Craig Jr. made his 10th consecutive start, and this year his mother and two sisters also ran in the event.
His time of one hour and 17 minutes was 27 minutes slower than his time last year, but last year he wasn't coming off surgery the previous day or had his back heavily bandaged with two holes in it.
"I knew it was going to be pretty hard, like I've had surgeries before but never the day before," Sager Jr. said. "Obviously I didn't want to take any of the pain pills. I'm not trying to run a 10k on OxyContin. So I just had to deal with it."
Sager Sr. seemed to take his son's decision to run in stride, his son saying that his father said he would have done the same thing if he were in Craig Jr.'s shoes.
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