On Saturday, November 12th, Jason ran in and completed his first marathon in Richmond, VA. He had a really good experience training and running with his friend, Jon and despite a few injuries and setbacks along the way, they both finished those long 26.2 miles!! This makes the second marathoner in our little family now (the third if you count Landon who ran the Richmond Marathon with me in the womb!!) Jason finished in just under 5 hours and is already talking about how he can improve with the next one. Oh boy, I think he's caught the bug of racing now. We may have to take turns with our different races now!!
I was so proud of him for accomplishing this lifelong goal of his. I have to admit though, that it was hard for me to be a spectator. I can't wait to get back out and do my own races again!!
And I'm not sure who was more tired by the end of the day...Jason who ran 26.2 miles or me who ran around with three kids trying to see him at different points along the way, battling road closures in an unknown city. Okay, okay I shouldn't complain...but I will anyway because here's how MY day went down...
6:30 a.m.: Get up and get all three kids ready, nurse the littlest one and head out the hotel door by 7 a.m. to drive Jason and Jon to the starting line
7:30 a.m.: Back to the hotel to pick up Jon's wife and their kids (they also have three kids, all very close in age to ours), feed all SIX kids their breakfast and head out to cheering spot #1 at the 10K mark in two different vehicles since two adults and SIX kids can't all fit into one!!
9:00 a.m.: Get lost in Richmond for the first of about a million times that day...have a GPS but it's not very helpful considering all of the road closures. Finally find the first cheering zone about 15 minutes after our husbands had already passed (FAIL #1)
9:30 a.m.: Head to the next cheering zone at the halfway point (13.1 miles) with what we think is PLENTY of time to get there. Get lost again and Landon starts his potty dance and whine in the backseat. We quickly find a grocery store, run to the bathroom at the back of the store and get Landon on the toilet just in time for him to pee all over the bathroom floor, his underpants and only pair of jeans that I have on me!! (Fortunately I did have a pull-up and pair of shorts in the diaper bag which is what he wore for the rest of the day. At least nobody called me a bad mother for having my child wear shorts on a cold day!!)
10:20 a.m.: Finally arrive at cheering zone #2 and after it takes us what seems like a million years to get six kids and all the cheering gear out of the car, we are about 100 feet away when we see our husbands run by (FAIL #2) I started screaming "JASON, JASON, Do you need anything" and fortunately they heard us and turned around so that they could dump all their cold weather gear off to us. (It was a miracle that we were at least able to see them before they completely passed us by so maybe I should call this FAIL #1.5!)
10:30 a.m.: Jon's wife and I make the executive decision based on what has occurred thus far to not try to see them at mile 20 but instead grab some lunch and head straight to the finish area. After nursing both of our babies, we head back out in a desperate attempt to find a place we could eat lunch and never find anything (FAIL #3). We finally give up and just head straight to the finish. Again we THOUGHT we had plenty of time to reach our destination but with all the one way streets, road closures and traffic in downtown Richmond, it was a complete nightmare. I heard the word "Recalculating" way too many times from my GPS but with the huge mess that was downtown, I couldn't follow it's innocent directions for the life of me!!
12:15 p.m.: In panic mode now, I say a quick prayer to help us find a parking garage near the finish so that we can finally end this traffic nightmare. Another little miracle happened and we finally found a place to park both vehicles!! We weren't sure exactly when they would be finishing but were so glad that we could finally exit the cars and start our wait for them at the finish line.
12:55 p.m.: We wait for about 45 minutes and cheer on lots of different runners as they near the finish line. The kids were really into it for the first 30 minutes or so and then they started to get a bit restless. Landon started to wander off down the street so I quickly walked over to reign him in. And in the 10 seconds that my back was turned trying to prevent a lost child, Jason passed us (FAIL #4...the biggest one of the day!!) ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!?! When Jon's wife told me what had happened, it took everything I had to hold in all the tears of frustration from that entire morning. I grabbed all three kids and we walked the quarter of a mile to meet Jason after he came out from the finish area. I tried to be happy and supportive when I saw him but that lasted about 3 seconds before I broke down into tears and told him about our experiences that morning.
I definitely learned some very valuable lessons that day about what not to do when trying to spectate a marathon in a new city with three kids by yourself. I decided I needed to record the events of that morning to remind me why I can never do this to myself again!! By the end of it all, I definitely decided I would rather run the 26.2 miles than spectate in the chaos that we experienced that morning!!
7:30 a.m.: Back to the hotel to pick up Jon's wife and their kids (they also have three kids, all very close in age to ours), feed all SIX kids their breakfast and head out to cheering spot #1 at the 10K mark in two different vehicles since two adults and SIX kids can't all fit into one!!
9:00 a.m.: Get lost in Richmond for the first of about a million times that day...have a GPS but it's not very helpful considering all of the road closures. Finally find the first cheering zone about 15 minutes after our husbands had already passed (FAIL #1)
9:30 a.m.: Head to the next cheering zone at the halfway point (13.1 miles) with what we think is PLENTY of time to get there. Get lost again and Landon starts his potty dance and whine in the backseat. We quickly find a grocery store, run to the bathroom at the back of the store and get Landon on the toilet just in time for him to pee all over the bathroom floor, his underpants and only pair of jeans that I have on me!! (Fortunately I did have a pull-up and pair of shorts in the diaper bag which is what he wore for the rest of the day. At least nobody called me a bad mother for having my child wear shorts on a cold day!!)
10:20 a.m.: Finally arrive at cheering zone #2 and after it takes us what seems like a million years to get six kids and all the cheering gear out of the car, we are about 100 feet away when we see our husbands run by (FAIL #2) I started screaming "JASON, JASON, Do you need anything" and fortunately they heard us and turned around so that they could dump all their cold weather gear off to us. (It was a miracle that we were at least able to see them before they completely passed us by so maybe I should call this FAIL #1.5!)
10:30 a.m.: Jon's wife and I make the executive decision based on what has occurred thus far to not try to see them at mile 20 but instead grab some lunch and head straight to the finish area. After nursing both of our babies, we head back out in a desperate attempt to find a place we could eat lunch and never find anything (FAIL #3). We finally give up and just head straight to the finish. Again we THOUGHT we had plenty of time to reach our destination but with all the one way streets, road closures and traffic in downtown Richmond, it was a complete nightmare. I heard the word "Recalculating" way too many times from my GPS but with the huge mess that was downtown, I couldn't follow it's innocent directions for the life of me!!
12:15 p.m.: In panic mode now, I say a quick prayer to help us find a parking garage near the finish so that we can finally end this traffic nightmare. Another little miracle happened and we finally found a place to park both vehicles!! We weren't sure exactly when they would be finishing but were so glad that we could finally exit the cars and start our wait for them at the finish line.
12:55 p.m.: We wait for about 45 minutes and cheer on lots of different runners as they near the finish line. The kids were really into it for the first 30 minutes or so and then they started to get a bit restless. Landon started to wander off down the street so I quickly walked over to reign him in. And in the 10 seconds that my back was turned trying to prevent a lost child, Jason passed us (FAIL #4...the biggest one of the day!!) ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!?! When Jon's wife told me what had happened, it took everything I had to hold in all the tears of frustration from that entire morning. I grabbed all three kids and we walked the quarter of a mile to meet Jason after he came out from the finish area. I tried to be happy and supportive when I saw him but that lasted about 3 seconds before I broke down into tears and told him about our experiences that morning.
I definitely learned some very valuable lessons that day about what not to do when trying to spectate a marathon in a new city with three kids by yourself. I decided I needed to record the events of that morning to remind me why I can never do this to myself again!! By the end of it all, I definitely decided I would rather run the 26.2 miles than spectate in the chaos that we experienced that morning!!
2 comments:
Oh my...yeah it sounds like you ran your own mommy marathon that morning. I think we've all had those motherhood moments where we're trying to make something happen so hard and it just all falls apart. At least you hopefully got to give your hunny a sweaty hug at the end and say good job. :) Tell Jason congrats!
I love the support Dadra gave! It was a great race made even better by the fact she was there to support me!
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