Marathon weekend

Last Saturday was the annual Air Force Marathon at Wright-Patt. We were super excited to have Ryan's Uncle Michael come in from Germany to stay with us and run. Ryan's Mom was also able to come out for the weekend, which made it even more fun.

This is Michael, Claire and Ryan at the Hoffbrau house in Cinci on Thursday night.



While picking up Michael's registration packet for the Marathon on Friday at the big expo with food and vendors and running gear of all types, Ryan decided to see if there was any way he could sign up to run. There were tons of different races that weekend- 5k, 10k, relay, half Marathon and full Marathon. Keep in mind he has never run more than 5 miles and hasn't run at all in a month.

Well, you guessed it. He signed up to run the full Marathon with Michael. We quickly outfitted him with the bare necessities- like running shorts, etc. I mostly just started praying that he would make it without serious injury or threat to life.

We went out to dinner at one of our favorite Italian places- Carrabas for the traditional carb loading prior to running long distances. How much that really matters if you haven't trained at all anyways is up for debate. To further throw caution to the wind we even went out for ice cream after dinner.



The race started at 7:30am on Saturday so I dropped the boys off at 7am and then came home and went back to bed. Mindi and I then went to the finish line at 10am to see some of my friends finish the half Marathon and our neighbor finish the Marathon in 2 hrs 38 min. Rediculous.

Then we caught up with Ryan and Michael at about mile 22 where there was a spectator viewing area. Ryan was having lots of cramping in his legs but was able to push on to the finish.



Leslie and Claire waiting for Ryan and Michael at mile 22.



Ryan being a little crazy while running.



Michael and Ryan at mile 22.

The boys finished the race at 6hrs 30 min after stopping with a friend of Ryan's in the medical tent for about 30 minutes, so about 6 hrs overall.



They got very nice medals for finishing.




This is us with our neighbors. The guy on the left is the crazy guy who runs Marathons in 2 hrs 30 min- he got 4th overall in this Marathon. His wife ran the half Marathon.



Then we went home and put Ryan in an ice bath to try and prevent his muscles from completely breaking down and destroying his kidneys. Then we had lots of pizza, beer and margarita's to recover.

Sunday we took Michael back to the Cinci airport and stopped at Ikea on the way back. Ryan was not up to walking much, so I pushed him in a wheelchair while Grandma pushed Claire in the stroller.

He ended up weathering the strain of the Marathon with 2 blisters on his feet and very sore muscles, but after a few days of scheduled Motrin, he is as good as new. Luckily, Ryan's mom was able to help with Claire since I was on call on Monday night and Ryan still wasn't moving all that well.

He hasn't decided yet what his next race will be, but he has decided to never do it again without training. We'll see.