My Momma and Nick both had signed up to run it.
So Saturday night we had a low key night. We went over to my Mom and Dad's for dinner. We ordered Cugino's (yum!) and had salads and some pizza (mom had a light sandwich) and we just relaxed until about 8. I switched phones with my Mom because she wanted to run/walk with her phone in her pocket and she has a really nice Blackberry. She doesn't have insurance on it (I don't think) and I was worried about it falling out of her pocked. I switched phones so she ran with my beat up (and insured) phone and I carried her Blackberry. Then we headed home to get ready for bed and ready for our big morning on Sunday!
Sunday morning my alarm starting going off around 4:45 am. We hit snooze until a little after 5 and then got up and got ready. I didn't realize quite how cold it was going to be, so I put on jeans and a maternity shirt and grabbed a zip up hoodie. That was it....big mistake later.
Anyway, Nick also got dressed (in much warmer clothes) and we got Dom ready to go to Nani's house. We left our house around 5:35 am. We dropped Dom off and headed out to St. Charles. Traffic was backed up a lot. The starting line was in the parking lot at Verizon Wireless Ampitheater. I dropped Nick off on the side of the road (literally) because I was afraid of getting stuck in the lot! (Don't worry, we were only a quarter mile away from the start line, he needed to warm up anyway!).
After I dropped Nick off, I stopped at the Mobile down the street and filled up my tank and went inside. I went to the bathroom and bought a bottle of water and a cup of decaf coffee. Then I headed out to Mile Marker 3.
I couldn't park too close the the 3rd mile marker, so I actually parked after mile marker 4 and walked up to three. I met my sister and her husband there. We hung out for awhile and then waited for the runners to come. When the runners started, we cheered them on and started looking for Nick and Momma. We saw Nick and he looked tired.
Insert: I don't know how many of you have been to watch a marathon/half marathon, but people always wear more clothes than they plan on wearing and then shed them randomly throughout the race. The clothes are then gathered and donated. Well 3 miles is a good spot to start shedding clothes apparently. People threw stuff all around us. We didn't take any, but I think people were thinking we were!
Well Nick stopped right at the 3 mile marker and took his pants off (he had shorts on underneath). He was across the sea of runners from us though and had his headphones on. My brother in law, Andrew, is hilarious. He likes to joke around. Well he yelled over to Nick (pretending he didn't know him) and said, "Hey bud! What size are those pants??". My sister and I started cracking up but other people looked at us like we were really just there to score some free clothes!! To make us look even worse, we ran across to get Nick's pants!! So people really thought we were just taking clothes! Oh well.
We saw Mom not too much further back. We gave her high fives and cheered her on and then we went across to the other side of the street to wait for them to head back. (It was a long stretch of the route where you went down the one side of the street to a certain point and then came back the other side of the street. So we got to see them twice without hardly moving!).
When we saw Nick, he was hurting. He said he had bad shin splits and didn't know how well he was going to do. But he kept moving.
After a few more minutes, I decided to start walking against the people back toward my car and then see mom on my walk back. So I left Angie and Andrew and headed back. I saw my mom around the 4 mile marker and she was still in good spirits. She was taking her coat off, so I took that to bring to my car (it's a nice jacket and she didn't want to toss it). I gave her another high 5 and told her I'd see her at the finish!
The rest of the walk to my car people really thought I was taking things since I had a jacket AND pants in my hands but oh well.
When I got back to my car, I drove back to the Ampitheater. I found a parking spot and took the shuttle to the finish line. I wormed my way up to the rail around the finish line and was right behind a woman who was taking pictures of people she knew. After a few pictures, she moved on to the finish area and I got a front row spot! I heard the announcers say it was almost the 2 hour mark. I figured since Nick was hurting, he might be longer than last time (his April Half Marathon time was 2 hours and 9 minutes). So I kind of looked but wasn't expecting to see him yet. Shortly after the 2 hour mark was announced, I saw him! He was running good! He finished at 2 hours and 12 minutes after the "gun" went off, but since he was in the back of the starting group, he actually finished in 2 hours and 4 minutes approximately.
I was so proud of him. I went to find him after the finish line and we found each other pretty quickly. I was surprised. He came out of the athlete's tent and said he wished he had his pants. :) Well I told him I had them back in the car, so took the shuttle back to the car and got his pants. We drove back to the finish line to wait for Mom. We wandered around a bit and then took our seats on the route to the finish line.
We found Mom and I walked with her and cheered her on a bit and then went back to Nick. We waited for Mom and her friend to finish the race and then they met up with us, where we drove Bridget back to her car. Then we took Mom to go get Dom and go to lunch.
The 5 and 2 halves of us (Mom, Nick, Angela, Andrew, Myself and the two kiddos) went to lunch at Joey B's on the Hill. Lunch was fabulous. But then we were exhausted. My mom took my car back home and Nick and I took naps (along with Dommie). The whole rest of the day was spent doing nothing but watching football and relaxing. It was great.
I'm so proud of Nick and my Mom for how they finished! They did great!
Here is their official finish information:
NICHOLAS:
202nd place in his age group (30-34)
6846 (his bib number)
30 (his age)
1,193rd place overall (out of 5,940 people)
2:04:46 (his chip time)
2:12:33 (his gun time)
9:31/M (his pace)
MY MOMMA:
126th place in her age group
2673 (her bib number)
We won't tell you her age... ;-)
3,438th place overall (out of 5,940 people)
3:34:13 (her chip time)
3:45:48 (her gun time)
16:21/M (her pace)Again, they were amazing. Way to go Mom and Nick!! :)
1 comment:
I ran the L&C half marathon yesterday, too, and I thought all of the families there cheering on their runners were awesome! What a good wife and daughter you are to drag yourself around so early and in such chilly weather.
Your little boy is adorable. Good luck with baby #2! :)
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