A Frustrating Finish....

Well, today was the day of the marathon, and unfortunately, Kent's injured leg/knee wouldn't allow him to finish. The day started out quite cold, but at least it wasn't raining or snowing. Kent, Stephen (Kent's brother), and I took the train downtown and headed toward the start line. It was insane the amount of people that we saw. There were not only so many runners, but so many people there to watch and support others. Stephen and I waited at the start line to watch the first few runners start the race. Yes, to them, it was a race for them! These people were crazy fast. They were running about 4.50-5 minutes miles! WOW!!! After watching the first five minutes from the start line, we walked to the two mile mark to hopefully see Kent there. We also met up with Erin Brighty at that point. We waited there for awhile, but it was so difficult to see with all of the people. After awhile, we took off and walked to the 13 mile mark, still not having seen Kent! We waited until 10:30am at the 13 mile mark for Kent. That was 2 and 1/2 hours after the beginning of the race, so we figured we must have just missed him. We were so cold, couldn't feel our hands, and our muscles were very stiff, so we walked down the block to the Starbucks to get a hot drink to warm ourselves up. After finally defrosting, we headed back toward the finish line in hopes to get a good spot to be able to see Kent finish at least. We made our way to the front of the fence for the finish line, when my phone started ringing. It was Kent saying it was at the reunite tent. He wasn't able to finish, as he had gotten an injurty about 6 weeks ago. His ITband flared up and made it impossible for him to run or walk. He started out the race, and at 1 1/2 miles, his leg/knee started to bother him. He kept running until about 8 miles, then he had to walk. He started walking from then on, but at 16 miles, he had to make a decision whether he was going to run back out on the race course, or walk back at that point. Since he was walking at a 5 hour or 5 1/2 hour pace, he decided that he wasn't going to make his goal of finishing in a certain time, or possibly not even finish within the alloted time. So, he pulled off the course. While he is definately disappointed, he's glad that at least he was able to finish the half marthon at a strong pace. Plus, he is at least able to walk right now. He's limping, or walking with a straight leg, but at least he's walking.

I think for now, he's decided that he is going to just run half marathons, just because of the injury rate from training for marathons. I'm just glad that he's safe, and he survived his first marathon experience.

I'll post some pictures of the race, so you can at least see the mob of people that there were. Kent said that the entire run from downtown to Wrigleyville, there were fans the entire way there and back.