When Matt turned 40, he made a goal that he would run another marathon this year. He wanted to do better than his first marathon. And he wanted to beat Oprah. Early in the year he talked about doing the Rock 'n Roll marathon, but we never pulled the trigger and signed him up. I found a half marathon that I wanted to run on Labor Day, and Matt did it to try to get his training going. But it wasn't until 5 weeks before the Rock 'n Roll marathon that we officially signed him up. He tried to train the best he could while coaching 2 soccer teams and doing some reffing on the side. He was usually able to run about 4 times a week - little 4-5 mile runs with a long run on Saturday. The longest run he was able to get in was 14 miles with Justin Marshall two weeks before the race. Then he got a 9 mile run in late in the evening a week before. Yesterday, the day before his race he reffed 2 soccer games! Then came race day! We decided we would support him as a family. We plotted out all the places we thought we could park and wait for him. The course was along a trail that wasn't always accessible.
So we dropped him off way up north and went to our first stop. We had plenty of time to make some signs and get in position
And we were excited to see him here at mile 2.
He seemed happy and full of energy. That was a good sign!
We made our way to another spot about 6 miles into the race. More high fives for our favorite runner.
At the halfway point Matt was right on track, running a steady 9:30 pace.
When we were plotting out our stops, Matt felt like he would probably need a gu around mile 18. He wasn't sure how he would be feeling at that point. We were shocked when we saw him in the distance about 10 minutes ahead of when we thought we would see him! He told us he felt pretty good still.
I didn't get a picture of the second to last spot that we saw him. At mile 22 he ran all the way up a hill that we saw tons of people walking. As he passed us he said he was starting to feel tired. I couldn't believe how awesome he was doing!!
Then we saw him .2 miles from the finish line. Howie, Nina and Cameron ran with him the rest of the way, even across the finish line. His time was incredible!! He got a 4:15:09!!!
Matt told me that at mile 23 he saw the pace runner for a 4:15 time coming up behind him. He hadn't realized how fast he was going and when he saw that he could actually finish in 4:15, he told himself he would stay with them. At mile 25 he was starting to fall behind the pacer and he was struggling to keep running. With a half mile to go, the pacer turned around and encouraged Matt to pick it up a little bit. Then he saw is and the kids encouraged him to finish strong. I am so proud of Matt and how amazing he did today! All of the kids were proud of him too!!
And not 1 minute after this picture, Rex got lost and we spent 20 minutes frantically trying to find him. Turns out he went and sat on a bench when he couldn't find us and started crying. A race volunteer saw him and brought him over to the information tent. I went to that tent to ask for help finding him and there he was playing on an iPad. I'm so so glad we found him!
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