Marathon

The Nashville Marathon was this past Saturday! When I signed up, I originally thought the course was pretty flat and had read that the average ending temperature was around 65 degrees. Seemed like a pretty ideal race to me! Well.... Nashville actually is not so flat. The hills make the city really beautiful, though, which I was pleasantly surprised by, just not while I was running!! HAHA. Anyway, the hills and the temperatures hanging out in the 80's made for a tough run! I did fine and I finished, so that is good:) We left on Friday... Ross had class, and Susy's husband was out of town, so the two of us rented a minivan, to transport us and the kids down to Nashville in time to pick up our race packets. Both husbands came later in the evening. Here is a picture Ross wanted to take of me about to head out in the van:



And so the adventure began. The van had a blown fuse, and we tried to fix it, but we just couldn't, so we alternated between DVDs for the kids and using the GPS for navigation! And once we parked downtown, poor Max had to pee so bad I was sure he was going to lose it. We made it to the bathroom, though and after a serious minute of going he said, "Man, that feels better!" As we walked outside, we noticed the wind! Yikes! Now we had heat, hills, and wind... that is probably a runners triple threat nightmare right there!!

I don't have a pre-race picture. We had to leave too early for Ross to be snapping shots, but he and the kids were about 1/4 mile from the finish, so he got this one:

I had actually already run passed him when I heard him. He said he was screaming my name over and over so loud! I only heard him once! Must have been focusing on just getting done at that point. I was thrilled to see them at that point though. My kids have zero patience when it comes to staying still in one spot and waiting for something not very exciting, so I knew Ross only had a short window of time to be there! One cool thing too was my family got to see me cross the finish line on-line through a live webcast. So that was very neat. A couple of other things that I remember from the race... We ran along a neat street that had tons of music companies and production companies, but they were all in older craftsman style houses along beautiful tree-lined streets. We also ran along a lake or a river that was pretty as well. I mentioned it earlier, but I really had no idea how pretty and neat this city was. We ate dinner downtown near Vanderbilt one night as well, and like that area, too. Oh and I saw a bunch of nuns along the run. I was actually hoping to see two girls I went to college with outside, because they belong to this particular convent, but they weren't there! They probably thought I was crazy though because I ran really close to them and tried to examine all their faces to see if I recognized them (I had to get close because they wore their full habit), but I didn't see them, so I just waved!

So, it is all done now! I'm probably retiring my marathon shoes:) Maybe try some shorter races. Thanks for thinking of me and cheering me on!