Parental brag - Chris's first marathon
A few of you have met Chris, my eldest son, who is graduating from high school this year. I can't help but tell you some good news.
Chris had a bucket list item to run a marathon before he finished high school, and yesterday he ran his first. He didn't quite get the sub-3:00 he fantasized about, but he qualified for Boston and Dad beamed big.
As for anyone who had never run longer than a half before and had to put up with our lousy early spring, training was a bit of a challenge for him. We had him doing an EN/MN type program, but it was really tough to get some of that fast running in early in the season because of bad weather. A few overuse warning signs from the mid-spring ramp up meant cutting out a few of the not-so-key runs...and this plus a pretty warm/humid day translated to a 3:04:xx finish on a pretty isolated course, on which he came in 12th overall...so he ran with not much company after the half marathon split off.
The last 5-6 miles, he was clearly suffering, but put together one last hard mile ... I saw him at mile 25. He cursed at me, ran up the last hill, got to the top...I told him he could see the last turn when he got to the bottom...and the finish was downhill from there. Made it under the 3:05 cutoff with about 10 sec to spare. He's done a few halves (and a half IM) so he knew to ask for medical immediately after he crossed the line. (Probably 2/3 of the top 20 finishers ended up in medical.) To avoid cheating by pacing, I ran the last mile about 20-30 yards behind him along the sidewalk to yell for him. He still doesn't remember a whole lot about the last 4-5 min of the race and the first 10 in the med tent. :-) First half split was 1:29; second half split 1:35. Not perfect execution, but we are definitely taking it and putting it in our pockets for his first.
While I hate to see him suffer, I knew he had left every little bit of himself out there on the course. Very proud.
Another nice thing is he isn't doing the usual "I swear I'll never do that again" thing. He truthfully told his younger brother and sister (when they asked this morning) that he's not a good enough runner to represent his college in cross country or track, but he was pretty sure he would run for the marathon club team and maybe the triathlon team.
I'd have been proud of him either way, but the good result sure made it special.
Comments
On a side note, can you at least still bike faster than him...? Because if I remember correctly Chris is a pretty exceptional swimmer as well...
He was a decent high school varsity swimmer, but not exceptional...not a college prospect or anything... his best 500 was 5:0x and his best 200 was something like 1:55. I don't have them in front of me. He hasn't biked a whole lot the last couple years as he has been focusing more on the single sports in season...so my guess is I could still outbike him except going straight up a hill. :-)
He did send me a "photo essay RR", which I take to mean it's ok for me to share. (He is in Uganda on a school/service project as I write this.)
I'm trying to post it.... but struggling.
I put it up on google. Here's a link
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1DWOJnVQEtTRlJJVWttTWhxWjg/edit?usp=sharing
P.S. The Taylor family is the family of his pretty serious girlfriend. She (Sadie, not specifically mentioned in the report) has had all kinds of injuries, but shared the bucket-list thing with him, and run-walked the marathon on the same day, as did another friend of theirs.
P.P.S. The race photographer at the finish shot a dozen pictures of him crossing the line. They go from him running in not so great form to putting it together for a few steps to cross the line to pain to the medical guys. It turns out to be quite a little photo essay that I'm sure all of us can relate to. I loaded the pics on a picasa album. http://picasaweb.google.com/wsjinames/RockfordMarathon. It makes a nice little photo essay that we can all relate to if you see them in order as a slide show.