26.2

as you may or may not know, my strapping man of a husband had been training for a marathon for the past 6 months. on february 15, his training paid off and he completed his first marathon! i know, it's impressive, right?!

i thought about making him do the blog himself, because, having never done one, i really can't properly capture the emotion, the physical pain and the mental games your mind plays while you move your bod 26.2 miles on foot. therefore, i can really only give you the experience as seen through my eyes and the eyes of the punks who came along for the ride.

first of all, i think addison and i had very different ideas of what marathon weekend would be. not that i had grandiose plans to go out and party or anything - i mean, we did still have the babies with us - but i was expecting a little more than this:

where we just camped out in the hotel all day the day before the race. and i KNOW the weekend wasn't about ME...but, i say again, we had the kids with us. do you know what happens to 2 and 4 year olds when you tell them to stay quiet in a small room all day!?

the thing was, well, a couple of things really. for one, it was about 45 degrees on this saturday. it was supposed to be in the 60s, but it didn't make it out of the 40s. i, of course, was counting on 60s so i didn't pack ANY jackets for ANY of us, which was our first problem. we ended up trekking through about 12 blocks in the cloudy, cold wind to get addison's marathon packet and by the time we got done we were freezing and starving so we grabbed ourselves one of my old favorites, taco x-press, and then we headed back to the hotel to regroup. which brings me to thing #2: addison's pending cold.

he was beginning to feel a sore throat coming on and he was afraid he was going to be sick on marathon day, so he wanted to lay low. our only option was to get the kids watching a dvd, but after about 30 minutes (if even) they were bouncing off the walls and, frankly so was i, so we decided to go find something to do for a couple of hours before dinner. however, the weather was so crappy we didn't have the option to go walk around town lake or anything so our options were slim. that's how we ended up at the mall-in-da-hood.

WORST mall i've ever been in. just nothing there save about 4 different perfumeries and 40 stores i've never heard of. even the food court was generic. you could literally go to "chicken express" or "hamburgers" or "pizza", it was hysterical. we did happen upon a little entertainment for the kids. look at the sheer glee on their faces.

so bad.

after that rip-roaring time, we journed around town to find addison some pasta for dinner. we ended up grabbing some pasta take-out and got the kids happy meals which we then took back to the hotel and ate in our room. addison did go to the hotel bar and get me a glass of wine - such a good husband, taking care of my happy hour needs...after all, it was valentine's day.

the morning of the marathon, addison took a shuttle downtown at something disgusting like 5am while i slept in with the punks and planned to meet up with him at the finish line later on. the punks and i had breakfast in the hotel and then we headed down town, found a place to park about a mile or a little less from the finish line, and hit the trail around town lake. unlike the previous day, it was beautiful and much warmer. we had a great stroll around town lake and saw a million ducks and turtles - which was very exciting for the kids.

at some point, i realized that i had severly underestimated how far the loop was around the lake and we had to turn around and high-tail it back to the congress st. bridge in order to be at the finish line by 11:15am. meanwhile, i'm wearing sneakers but no socks, jeans, and a long sleeve t-shirt = sweaty, hot mess. not only that, but i failed to bring myself any water or anything to drink and the kids had long since downed their juice boxes. i was quite sure i was going to die. so. hot. need. water. no. time. must. run.

so at last we arrive in the finish area, but it is so chaotic i have no idea where the actual finish line is. i just steer my monster stroller through the throngs of people until i find a place that is relatively obvious and as close to the finish as we can get:

we stood below that sign for over an hour and all while (since this is about MY marathon experience...) i was sure i'd pass out at any second. heat. hunger. thirst. and here i am watching all these people who just ran 26.2 miles and all i can think about is how i'd really dig a sip of one of their gatorades.

i was also worried that i wouldn't see addison - that somehow he maybe would have come out at some alternate location and we'd miss eachother and what a mess that would be and therefore i was also having a bit of anxiety about all that.

but, at last, i saw him coming down the pike. i was so happy for him at that moment. he did it! he worked his butt off and he ran the whole way and he finished a marathon! it's so impressive, don't you think?

he even gave me a drink of his gatorade and i didn't even have to ask.