___________________________________________________________________________________

October 24, 2010

Well it’s been three weeks since we ran the Twin Cities Marathon and I have to tell our story before it's really old news.

This was our first family marathon, something we had talked about doing for a while.  Getting all the adults in the family to agree wasn’t easy!  Patty had never run before and she wasn’t exactly anxious to commit to something like this.  We registered all nine adults in the family (four daughters, three sons-in-law, Patty and myself) back in January.  Patty and I started training together in March.  We went with the old folks run/walk training program.   Throughout our training we alternated running 3 minutes and walking 1 minute.   For those of you who are runners you know this as the Galloway method (he’s old now too!).  We did the prerequisite long runs working up to 19 miles in mid July.  That’s when I broke my collarbone in a "small" biking accident.  So Patty trained on her own for a couple of weeks.  In mid August Patty strained her calf muscle and couldn’t run more than one mile at a time for about two and one half weeks.  That was a big setback.  She missed her 23 and 25 mile training runs (darn!).  We filled her with Ibuprofen and she got back running about the first of September. We quickly did a 12 mile and 20 mile long run, trying to catch up on her training.  Then we tapered down the last two weeks to rest up for the big event.

During the training runs, especially the long ones, Patty found that music made it easier to do what she termed “crazy” long runs.  So we got the songs she wanted on a little iPod and I could notice the difference.  Our goal all along was to get her to the finish line in six hours – before they shut it down.

The weekend of the race we all trucked over to Minneapolis where some of the grandkids ran in Saturday’s events the day before the marathon.  Solomon (9) ran the 5k, Sammy (5) and Carson (5) ran the one mile and Siri (2) ran the ½ mile.  Those were fun to watch.

After the kids races we headed over to pick up our packets at the St. Paul Civic Center.  They always have a big expo there for runners.  There was a seminar going on and the speaker was Kristin Armstrong, Lance Armstrong’s ex-wife.  Patty listened to some of her presentation and she also talked to her afterward.  She told Patty to start the run with gratitude and finish it with gratitude.  That along with motivational comments from our daughters helped set the stage for the big event.

But the big thing was the daughters had ordered matching bright red running shirts for us all to wear during the race.  On the back of everyone’s shirt they had screen printed a portion of Hebrews 12:1 “. . let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”  And on the front of the four daughters’ shirts in big letters was “PATTY’S DAUGHTER”.  The sons-in-law shirts had “PATTY’S SON-IN-LAW.”  My shirt had “PATTY’S HUSBAND.”  And Patty’s shirt naturally had “PATTY.”  

I thought that was neat.  We were a family and the shirts sort of bonded us together.  Little did I know...

On race day we got up at about 6:00am to have some good energy food in preparation for the 8:00am race.  At about 7:00am we walked the one mile from our hotel over to the Metrodome where the race starts.  The weather was perfect for running, 40 degrees and no wind.  We all made our last-minute bathroom stops and headed out to the starting line along with nearly 9000 other runners.  They estimate about 300,000 people come out to watch the race.  They are spread out all along the 26 mile route.

At 8:00am the gun went off and we were underway, running through downtown Minneapolis and out toward the lakes in south Minneapolis.  About 3 miles into the run the congestion of 9000 runners started to spread out and we started to hear comments from the crowd like:

                “Go Patty, go Patty’s husband!”

“Hey Patty, we’ve seen your daughters and sons-in-law!”

                “Patty, we’ve been waiting for you!  We’ve seen your whole family!”

                “Good job Patty!  You’ve got a great group!”

                “There’s Patty’s husband . .  . THERE’S PATTY!

And my favorite:  “There’s Patty’s husband.  He knows his place!”

Over and over again people had some variation of these comments;  it was like we had our own cheering section.  I thought it was all kind of weird and it wasn’t until about mile 7 that I realized it was going to be like this the entire race!  It really never stopped all the way through.  I think this was huge motivation for Patty.  At the 13.1 mile mark (halfway point) I told her that she had just run the first half of the marathon faster than she ran the Fargo Half Marathon back in May.  She was running very well, very consistent.  The comments from the crowd just kept on coming.  At mile 16 she turned on her iPod and after about 2 minutes took it off again.  I was a little worried, thinking she needed the music for motivation and the iPod wasn’t working or something.  I asked her what was wrong and she said “I can’t hear what the people are saying to me!” 

 The crowd was amazing.  I told her that for me it was like I was running with a celebrity.  I should have had some sort of video camera to record it, because it really is hard to describe what it was like.

At mile 18 we were at 3 hours and 50 minutes with 8.2 miles to go.  I told her that we were going to make it in before the six hour cut-off.  She said “Are you sure?”  I told her we could walk the rest of the way and still make it.  She relaxed a little from there on and about mile 23 we knew we had a good cushion, so we slowed down a bit.  Once the St. Paul Cathedral came into view it was about a half mile downhill to the finish line near the capitol building.  We crossed together at 5 hours and 43 minutes (chip time).

She made it!  She got her shirt and her medal.

Here is a link to Patty’s results page:    http://www.mtecresults.com/runner/show?rid=25825&race=177

If you look off to the right of the screen under Result Features you can see a Finish Video link.  That is pretty cool. 

Patty’s reaction?  She isn’t ready to sign up for another marathon – not yet anyway.  Maybe a half marathon next summer.  But she has become a runner.  She is running regularly since the marathon, and enjoying it.