I woke up at my sister-in-law’s around 4:30 a.m., ate a Picky Bar and then drove J and his brother-in-law to the shuttle in Proctor to take them to the Grandma’s start line. Once I dropped them off at the shuttle I headed up to St. Scholastica where my friend, KK, was staying.
(We had decided, the night before, that we weren’t going to attempt to bike the course as we had originally planned. Quite a few of the locals had advised against it — especially with my road bike and we didn’t want to risk not seeing our boys at all so we decided we’d shoot for seeing them during the second half of the course.)
It was ridiculously foggy when we headed out for a run which made it hard to see where we were going. This made things pretty interesting considering neither of us were familiar with the area and ended up having a very hilly run.
After our run we quickly showered at the dorms and then headed to as close to Canal Park as we could to get a good parking spot for after the race. KK and I then made the 2+ mile walk (all uphill, NBD) to meet up with her bf’s support crew and get some food at Sara’s Table. Right after we ordered (KK and I split a greek omelet and a specialty pancake stuffed with blueberries and homemade granola) I got another update on J’s progress and realized we’d have to book it to make sure I didn’t miss him at the mile marker I wanted to see him at! So I don’t have any photos of our beautiful (and I think it was delicious) breakfast. I definitely want to go back to Sara’s Table sometime.
(I’m so happy that J upgraded to RunKeeper Elite. I was able to live track him throughout the entire race, so I knew where he was the whole time.)
We shoveled the food in and then KK’s boyfriend’s life-saving crew dropped us off near Lake and Superior (right between mile 24-25) and waited for J run by. We had our cameras ready (even though by this point, they were getting rained on) and I was getting pretty emotional just thinking about how close he was to accomplishing his goal. His BQ time was well within reach, as long as nothing horrible happened during the last three-ish miles.
Finally, we saw him coming towards us and to my relief, he looked amazing! So strong and just FLYING. KK and I started jumping up and down, screaming his name and snapping as many photos as we could.
Here he comes..
He sees us!
Then, we sprinted to get to mile 26 to see him again.
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After that KK headed back to cheer her bf on and I headed to meet up with J and the family at the finish line.
So much fun.
J’s final time: 3:04:06. Time needed to qualify for Boston: 3:10. (Since it’s going to be so difficult to get in for 2014, J was shooting for a 3:05 to increase his chances of being able to register.)
After reuniting with J, we headed back to the finish to see Tim, our brother-in-law cross the finish line in 3:34:06 — AMAZING! Tim has run Grandma’s over a dozen times — and this was a PR for him!
The rest of the day included napping, eating and then we went to a party that evening in Cloquet, where I swear all of the attendees ran the race that day. Was pretty fun going to a party that only runners attend 🙂
So what’s next for my husband, besides hopefully Boston 2014? He’s also running TCM with me (well, not with me) so after taking a few weeks off, he’ll be back at it, training for another marathon!
running with hashimotos 