So we drove to Tyler, Texas, birthplace of Earl Christian Campbell, a.k.a., "The Tyler Rose," and stayed Wednesday night. Adam enjoyed the hotel room and the breakfast of oatmeal and sausage and yogurt and syrup and milk and a tiny bit of juice, and did I mention he likes breakfast? We covered the rest of the 488 miles Thursday.
Friday we checked out downtown San Antonio. We remembered the Alamo, took a boat tour of the river, had lunch along the riverwalk, and picked up my race packet at the Alamodome. No pictures; we forgot the camera that day.By Saturday, Adam had discovered that Jenn and Bryan's neighborhood had a pretty sweet park around the corner. He and Blake practiced riding bikes and played while I got in a short run.
The race was to start at 7:15 Sunday morning, and I got there early, thanks to Bryan dropping me off at stupid o'clock. Jean and Jenn and the kids were going to come later and see me finish. If everything went well, I would be finished by 9. If my knees, which had been giving me problems for the previous couple of weeks, couldn't hold up, I would finish MUCH later. As bad as my knees had been, I did not seriously expect them to make it. Neither did Jean or Jenn.
O ye of little faith.
As I was training for the run, since this was my first half-marathon and I had no idea what to expect or how to pace it, I decided on 3 target times. I would be satisfied with anything under an hour and forty-five minutes; I thought 1:42 would be a good day and 1:40 would be my everything-goes-well, best-case-scenario time.
I ran the first mile with the crowd. It's hard to do much else when there are 27,000 people trying to cover the same ground. But it was too slow, so I picked up the pace and by mile 5 the crowds had thinned enough to settle into a really good rhythm. In fact, my mile 6 and 7 splits were only 22 hundredths of a second different. The lack of good training for the final two weeks before the race took their toll on my calves, but my knees were hanging in there, so I kept up the pace all the way to the finish line, crossing in 1:39:28 and beating my best-case target by half a minute. Hooray for me.
And, of course, as I was finishing, Jean, Adam, Jenn, Stormy, and Blake were on a shuttle bus. Aside from the herding cats nature of getting 3 kids organized and moving on a Sunday morning, they figured my knee(s) would blow, and they would see me hobble to the finish line. Well, they were wrong. WRONG, I say!
But they did bring a nice sign:
So, after all that, we met up, went home and Jennifer prepared a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner (that couldn't be beat), since neither of us are going back to Washington for the holidays. We got to meet some of Bryan's family and watched football and the "Man v. Food" marathon. We had to give up on MvF because you can only say "Oh gawd" so many times before you start having a sympathetic heart attack.
Finally, we drove the 488 miles back to Monroe on Monday. Adam did great in the car, but that's a long time for anyone to be couped up. Luckily his potty training has progressed to the point that he will tell us if he needs to go, and, being a boy, we can pull over to the side of the road, pick a target, and he lets it fly (not pictured).
So, we're home. Thanks to Bryan, Jenn, Stormy, and Blake for putting up with us for the weekend. We had a good time. I'm still a bit sore, Adam is getting pretty good at the whole potty thing, and none of us wants to drive that far ever again.
