Married to a Marathoner
Mike's official stance today is "I am not committing to ever doing that to myself again."
You are hearing it here first : He will do it again. He isn't happy enough with the outcome to not try again. He was in better shape 2 weeks ago before the knee thing happened and therefore he knows he can shave a good 30-45 minutes off the time just by having 2 functioning legs. So I predict that he'll do it again. :)
It was a crazy full weekend!
Thursday at lunch, he was going to pick up both of our packets at the running festival at the football stadium. (I walked the 5k.) The insanity started much earlier than that. You see, I left something in his car and he left a couple things he needed at home on Thursday morning. So at 6:45am THursday morning, we met at Olive Garden's parking lot in White Marsh to exchange everything. Yawn.
Thursday at lunch, he got our race numbers and shirts and timing chips and all that jazz. He forgot to pick up our Little Italy dinner gift cards. Oops.
So Friday night, the insanity continued as it took my friend and I more than an hour to get home from work instead of the 35 minutes it usually takes. Ugh. We headed down to the city and first went to the hotel to check in. Mike had decided previously that it was worth the $ to stay in the Hilton that night so he didn't have to drive and park in the morning. After checking in, we went to the stadium to get our meal tickets. It was then that I realized just how out of shape I've gotten since school started. We parked across the street at Staples because it's closer than the stadium parking lots. This entailed running across 7 or 8 lanes of traffic (at a light) which put me out of breath. ;) Good thing I wasn't the one running the next day!
It took us about 45 minutes to get from the stadium to Little Italy because it was Friday night. No surprise there! We were shocked to realize that we still had our choice of no-line-to-wait-in restaurants for dinner. Our dinner at Chiapparellis was fine, but nothing terribly exciting. Our waitress kept forgetting us because it was busy. We liked Ciao Bella better a few weeks ago. After dinner it took about 2 minutes to get back to the hotel. :) Much better!
Our room had a nice view into the stadium. Someday, eventually, that will mean something in October in our town! We could see the starting line of the race from our window as well. Not too shabby! City was hopping - there was the ComicCon convention starting but a nursing convention was ending as well. Lots of people.
Saturday morning, Mike got up super early to start hydrating and eating Clif Bars and took a couple warm up jogs around the building. It was shockingly warm for October but not sunny, which I'm told is a nice thing if you're going to run around for 4+ hours. He headed off to his race. I watched the start, but I couldn't find him. Too many crazy people running.
There were several wheel chair athletes - they were BOOKING it. I find that super impressive. I was most super impressed by the 2 wheelchair athletes who weren't actually doing the racing, but rather had fathers (at least I assume they are fathers) pushing the wheelchairs. One was a younger child in what looked like a regular jogging stroller, and the other was a young adult or older teen riding in what was the style of a jogging stroller, but made for a bigger person. The dad pushed his son in the wheelchair for more than 4 1/2 hours. Wow. And the wheelchair had cool "wheelchair athlete" signs on it. It almost made me cry it was so awesome.
So then I met up with Sarah, Linda, and Patti to do our 5k. Sarah and I finished in 47 minutes, which did not meet our goal of 45, however, we did manage to meet our goal of not losing to the little old man with the hump who was barely picking up his feet! It took effort to beat that guy. He has my admiration because I was tired afterward and my legs are sore!
After finishing our race, we headed over to the inner harbor (right outside Hooters, actually) where we saw Mike jog by the 13 mile mark. He was moving pretty good at that point, staying on his desired pace.
(So let's think for a moment all the things I had done at that point between when he started running and when we saw him. Yowza.)
Sarah and I headed back so I could check out of the hotel and pack the car, and then we did what any elite class athlete would do after a race - we went and bought junk food. I had funnel cake. And it was good.
Hours later, we saw Mike again as he finished in just under 4 1/2 hours. Turns out his knee didn't cooperate on the later hills and he had to slow down. He's disappointed the 2nd half wasn't as good as the first half. Which is why I think he'll do it again. But he finished, and his dad showed up to surprise him too which was cool.
Today, he's hobbling around and pretending to be an invalid so I'll wait on him. It isn't working real well for him. ;) I was being nice until I realized that his legs worked well enough to refresh his beer while watching football!
So now, it's time for bed. Woohoo
You are hearing it here first : He will do it again. He isn't happy enough with the outcome to not try again. He was in better shape 2 weeks ago before the knee thing happened and therefore he knows he can shave a good 30-45 minutes off the time just by having 2 functioning legs. So I predict that he'll do it again. :)
It was a crazy full weekend!
Thursday at lunch, he was going to pick up both of our packets at the running festival at the football stadium. (I walked the 5k.) The insanity started much earlier than that. You see, I left something in his car and he left a couple things he needed at home on Thursday morning. So at 6:45am THursday morning, we met at Olive Garden's parking lot in White Marsh to exchange everything. Yawn.
Thursday at lunch, he got our race numbers and shirts and timing chips and all that jazz. He forgot to pick up our Little Italy dinner gift cards. Oops.
So Friday night, the insanity continued as it took my friend and I more than an hour to get home from work instead of the 35 minutes it usually takes. Ugh. We headed down to the city and first went to the hotel to check in. Mike had decided previously that it was worth the $ to stay in the Hilton that night so he didn't have to drive and park in the morning. After checking in, we went to the stadium to get our meal tickets. It was then that I realized just how out of shape I've gotten since school started. We parked across the street at Staples because it's closer than the stadium parking lots. This entailed running across 7 or 8 lanes of traffic (at a light) which put me out of breath. ;) Good thing I wasn't the one running the next day!
It took us about 45 minutes to get from the stadium to Little Italy because it was Friday night. No surprise there! We were shocked to realize that we still had our choice of no-line-to-wait-in restaurants for dinner. Our dinner at Chiapparellis was fine, but nothing terribly exciting. Our waitress kept forgetting us because it was busy. We liked Ciao Bella better a few weeks ago. After dinner it took about 2 minutes to get back to the hotel. :) Much better!
Our room had a nice view into the stadium. Someday, eventually, that will mean something in October in our town! We could see the starting line of the race from our window as well. Not too shabby! City was hopping - there was the ComicCon convention starting but a nursing convention was ending as well. Lots of people.
Saturday morning, Mike got up super early to start hydrating and eating Clif Bars and took a couple warm up jogs around the building. It was shockingly warm for October but not sunny, which I'm told is a nice thing if you're going to run around for 4+ hours. He headed off to his race. I watched the start, but I couldn't find him. Too many crazy people running.
There were several wheel chair athletes - they were BOOKING it. I find that super impressive. I was most super impressed by the 2 wheelchair athletes who weren't actually doing the racing, but rather had fathers (at least I assume they are fathers) pushing the wheelchairs. One was a younger child in what looked like a regular jogging stroller, and the other was a young adult or older teen riding in what was the style of a jogging stroller, but made for a bigger person. The dad pushed his son in the wheelchair for more than 4 1/2 hours. Wow. And the wheelchair had cool "wheelchair athlete" signs on it. It almost made me cry it was so awesome.
So then I met up with Sarah, Linda, and Patti to do our 5k. Sarah and I finished in 47 minutes, which did not meet our goal of 45, however, we did manage to meet our goal of not losing to the little old man with the hump who was barely picking up his feet! It took effort to beat that guy. He has my admiration because I was tired afterward and my legs are sore!
After finishing our race, we headed over to the inner harbor (right outside Hooters, actually) where we saw Mike jog by the 13 mile mark. He was moving pretty good at that point, staying on his desired pace.
(So let's think for a moment all the things I had done at that point between when he started running and when we saw him. Yowza.)
Sarah and I headed back so I could check out of the hotel and pack the car, and then we did what any elite class athlete would do after a race - we went and bought junk food. I had funnel cake. And it was good.
Hours later, we saw Mike again as he finished in just under 4 1/2 hours. Turns out his knee didn't cooperate on the later hills and he had to slow down. He's disappointed the 2nd half wasn't as good as the first half. Which is why I think he'll do it again. But he finished, and his dad showed up to surprise him too which was cool.
Today, he's hobbling around and pretending to be an invalid so I'll wait on him. It isn't working real well for him. ;) I was being nice until I realized that his legs worked well enough to refresh his beer while watching football!
So now, it's time for bed. Woohoo