Marathon Man

Jonathan finished a very successful running career at Ballard Memorial this past spring. He went to state in both cross country and track and was part of the best Ballard Memorial track team ever (they won the Class A First Region and finished second in the state in Class A).

I presume he was looking for a new challenge when he announced this end of the summer that he wanted to run a marathon. The obvious choice was the St. Judes marathon in Memphis in December. He began training and working up to the distance. It turns out that most traning programs don't ever have you run a full 26 miles. The most you run is 20 miles. He worked very hard.

He ran in the Pumpkin Run 10k (6.2 miles) and he finished well (9th overall and 1st in his age range). Of course, this would be nothing compared to the marathon.

We left Friday for Memphis and stopped at the convention center to pick up his packet with his bib, shirt and timing chip. We checked into our hotel downtown and then went to see my brother. He was doing better and able to go home. He still has to have a nurse visit regularly to dress his wound and he has a long road to recovery still ahead of him. We went to dinner with my sister Melissa, my brother-in-law Richard and my almsot one year nephew Brody. We got back to the hotel and rested and went to bed.

We got up and got ready. Jonathan grabbed some food for the race and we walked to the start line. It was cold. The temperature was 31 with a breeze and overcast. We walked around for a while and then Jonathan lined up in his "corral". The runners line up in corrals based on their expected time per minute. They release the elite runners (i.e "really fast") first and then wait two minutes to release the next corral until everybody is off. There are 11,000 runners waiting to run in the half and full marathons so they have to do it like this.

I ran back to the hotel and to the 3 mile marker and waited but I must have missed him. I went back and ate breakfast and went to meet him at the 13.1 mile marker (half way). He gave me the thumbs up and he looked OK. I ran back to our hotel and packed our luggage. Richard tried to come by and get me so we could see Jonathan at 19 miles (by their house). He couldn't get through all the runners in time so I didn't get to see him there.

The race ends in Auto Zone park (home of the Memphis Redbirds the Cardinals AAA club). I went there after loading the car up with our luggage and checking out of the hotel. I waited and finally saw him coming in! He made in 4:01 which wasn't quite his goal of 4 hours but close enough. As expected, he was really tired and hurting a bit. He got himself some food and went out front for me to pick him up. I picked up him up and we headed for home. As you would expect, he slept most of the way home.

He was sore this morning, but happy. I am very impressed at how he set a goal and worked hard to reach it. He's already talking about going back next year and he tells me I need to run the half. I guess I better start working on it soon...