Running Weekend

Big running weekend, Grandma's marathon. On Friday afternoon there was the whipper snapper race for kids down at BayFront. Both Ilee and Will raced. Both had some hesitation and apprehension but both did well. Will was on his own and was a little more nervous as the picture shows.

We picked up our race packets and Cade's dad full marathon packet after the race. The D.E.C.C. was crazy busy. Got home about 4:00 and practiced baseball with Will. He had a game at 5:30-6:30. Cades dad met us at the game. Will had a good game and actually had a ball hit to him that he stopped. After the game we all went to Bulldog for dinner. All you can eat spaghetti, which was good. The 75 cent meatballs were a little overrated.

On Saturday the half marathon started at 6:30 and the full marathon started at 7:30. I got up at 4:20 and was at UMD at 5:00a.m. to catch the bus up to the starting line. Weather wise it was a good day to run low 60s at the start. I was very happy with my run. My goal was to finish under 2 hours. Right from the beginning my right knee was sore. This is the knee I had scoped last year. I think there might be some more cartilage that needs to cleaned out. My training runs had been at a 9 minute pace which would put me a few minutes under 2 hours. As the run proceeded my pace was actually faster than 9:00 minutes. I figured I would try and build up a cushion for the end when I would be slower. I finished with a 1:52 time which I was very happy with. Kim and the kids came down to cheer me on. After finishing the race we watched the winner of the full marathon run by. Notice the similar running style between me and Lamech Mokono. The crazy thing is he needed only about 22 more minutes to run 26.2 miles compared to my 13.1 miles.

The Smith family then went to wait for Cades dad finish the full. Unfortunately we did not communicate what he would be wearing and ended up missing him go by. We ended up running into him walking back to the car. Will post some other marathon pictures on Monday.