Then we went back to the Selah Civic Center to listen to "Rev" talk about marathons. It was funny. Great comedy routine. There was a guy there who was running the marathon blind.
The thing about the Yakima marathon is that at mile 22 there is a pretty good sized hill that lasts about 1.5 miles. Once you get past that your on the homestretch. I told Cathi that I skipped my Friday run so I could run the last 5 miles with her on the marathon. She was very happy about that.
So Friday night we parked in a parking lot in some subdivision and watched Pelican Brief on the laptop. Cathi was getting a little frisky and well the cops came. But by the time they came we were innocently watching the end of the movie. They just said they wanted to make sure it wasn't a couple of teenagers. Hehe.
Cathi woke me up in a panic. Gordon! It's 6:15! We missed the bus! I found that hard to believe since I set my alarm for 5:30 and its loud. After a few seconds I had to calm her down. Her clock was still on Utah time and we were in Pacific Time Zone. After that we couldn't go back to sleep. We drove over to the Civic Center and Cathi started her routine for getting ready.
She boarded the bus and I killed a couple hours watching "Contact". Then I drove to the finish line and started walking. I saw the first hundred runners during that time. When I got to mile 21 I waited for only about 15 minutes before I saw Cathi. I knew that she was a little behind in getting under 4 hours, but that's OK. As long as her hip doesn't bother her. The last long run she took really scared her because she had some big pain in her hip. But when she met me she was so happy. She said, "I've never felt this great at the end of a marathon!".
So we started up the long hill. I went over it to get to that point and knew it pretty well. I knew I could run it without walking. I was concerned for Cathi though. She had already run 21 miles to that point and might be tired. She just said, "Bring it! See if you can keep up Gord!" I was glad to see her so peppy.
It was warm by the time we got to the top of the hill. I looked down and saw that my underarmor shirt that I had tied around me had come loose and fallen. I started to turn around to run back for it, but then I realized I wasn't here to save my favorite workout shirt, but to motivate Cathi so I turned back around and chased after Cathi. The whole time up that hill we ran and were passing people left and right. When we came down the hill we still were passing people left and right.
Cathi's average speed was barely increased during the climb and was actually pretty quick coming down. She ended up with 4:14:22. Not bad. We had a fantastic run and I was able to run the whole time and enjoyed being with her.
The drive was 22 hours round trip and my Mom was so kind enough to help with the kids for those two day. What a great trip! Now I'm really excited for Boston in two weeks.
Here is a short two minute video of our trip:
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| From Cathi's Marathons |
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