Some of you may have heard about the race that Mark and I ran last week. To set the stage for the race, you must understand the idea for running the race came from my brother Robert, who along with Mark, decided that we should enter a marathon and try to qualify for Boston. Our lack of planning eliminated the St.George marathon as a possibility, since it had filled up long before. So Mark looked around for another Boston qualifying marathon and stumbled onto the Ridge to Bridge Marathon in Morgantown, NC. It seemed to be pretty, on Saturday, and at least somewhat downhill.
Robert emailed us:
"Man and boys (in other words, Daniel and Mark/Bryce), The time to decide is now- are we going to do this marathon or not. I’m in! They cap the race at 150 runners. Rob"
Apparently, what he meant to say was "I'm in for now." Robert was all about training and seemed to be in great shape. He showed us a book on marathon training recommended to him by Ed Eyestone who was teaching his running class at BYU. We all began training. About 8 weeks before the marathon, the race has a final deadline for backing out. Robert decides that his "knee hurts" (he tried running and it hurt so he just stopped). He announced that he was backing out of the race.
About a week later, I got sick (probably influenza) and spent 3 weeks coughing and not running much at all. I did try two long runs toward the end of my training. The first was 16 miles, and while I kept a really good pace the first 8 miles of this run, I became really tired and ended up really slowing down the last two miles. It was during this time that my mind became semi-delirious (Carol would argue that delirium is the only thing that makes people run) that I came up with an idea to wear T-shirts and dedicate the race to Robert in a sort of mockery.
Mark helped me fine tune the wording, and they were ordered and turned out great. Here they are at the finish.
The best part of the race was seeing the transition people would make from the "how wonderful that they are remembering their dead brother" stage to yelling "Tell Bob he's a wuss" as they read the back of the shirts.
Of course the race wasn't all fun. Maybe if I'd done more of those 16 or 18 mile runs before hand it would have been better. But running in Tucson in July and August is not really fun at any time of the day. So qualifying for Boston did not happen.
During the race, Carol would wait for me every few miles, hand me Gatorade and say, "You know, you don't ever have to do this again."
Of course she doesn't know the power my brothers have. . . .
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This last picture is when Nicole mistakenly thought Bryce (my brother-in-law) had entered the race.
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