Erie - The Wife's Perspective

Soooo you’re telling me that I haven’t made an appearance on this blog in over two years? TWO YEARS? Well, I guess I have been pretty busy, mostly in the way that carrying, birthing and taking care of two babies (15 months apart), a cross-city move, and also continuing to work full-time and enthusiastically supporting my husband’s running habits (club, miles, and, for a while there, part-time employment, which ended when he realized his job really wasn’t so much “fun”) will keep a person busy. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t take any credit for keeping the little people alive day-to-day. That’s all Mike. But I still spend most of my non-working time with one or both of them and just that is enough to fully deplete my tank.

Anyway, at the present moment both of those crazy kids are dead asleep and I can get back to the matter at hand. The Erie Marathon.

As Mike mentioned, we fully intended to make this one a motorcycle trip, given that we almost never get to ride anymore. And I was totally on board, even when Mike said a rainy cool front was on its way in. Until the day before we left when I walked outside in the full sunshine in the middle of the day and was still chilly. Weather like that, on a bike going 75 mph, is just not pleasant and requires so many layers that I’m getting exhausted thinking about putting them on (which we can’t have or else this entry will end right here!). Add to that the fact that there’s really no scenic way to get to Erie from here that doesn’t require going super far out of the way and it wasn’t too long before I threw in the towel.

Usually car rides are great for me because Mike insists on driving (he gets so antsy in the passenger seat that he once complained after I had been driving for all of 40 minutes that we needed to stop so he could stretch his legs) and so I get to read to my heart’s content (another thing I don’t do enough of these days). But this time he insisted that I drive. The entire way there. And that’s when I knew that he was indeed nervous.

As Mike mentioned, we stopped the first night outside of Cleveland to stay with my cousin’s family and to have dinner at The Brew Kettle with them and my aunt and uncle. These guys are always a good time and I regret only that the timing was not good for an all-night bluegrass jam session (complete with moonshine, of course). Breaking the drive into two allowed us to leave the next day bright and early in the late afternoon and still get to Erie with plenty of time to hit packet pick-up and get the lay of the land.

Well, I could have gotten the lay of the land, anyway. Instead, after checking out the expo (which was really pretty decently sized for such a small race), we headed out to get settled in and figure out the dinner plan. Now, in our first few races we always had dinner reservations in place at least a month in advance. In this case neither of us had even pulled up Trip Advisor, which we did immediately after we found out that the race-sponsored pasta dinner was sold out. Lo and behold! Erie’s 2^nd highest rated restaurant is an Italian place, Mi Scuzi. But of course they couldn’t seat us until 9 (at which point not only would we hopefully be asleep, but I’m pretty sure they would have also been out of food). However, they did takeout and so that’s what we did. Along with at least a couple dozen other people from the looks of the bags lined up and waiting to be picked up when we showed up there at 5:20. I’m not sure there was even any food left for the 6 pm diners! The food was really great and we both stuffed ourselves silly (hey, spectating burns like dozens of extra calories!!).

So, the race. After an early morning wake-up (for real, waking up at 4 am for a 7 am race is always the hardest part about the whole thing for me) I finally decided to take a look at the course map. I used to plan my spectating before we even left home! Lucky for me it really couldn’t be any easier to spectate a race. The race is two full loops, so that the Start/Finish is also the halfway point. That’s three times to see your runner right there. Add to that the fact that the “far side” of the loop is about a 5 minute leisurely stroll away and you get to also catch your runner at miles 6 and 19. For Mike that’s a chance to see him about every 40 minutes, which including point-to-point time still gives me plenty of reading time while I’m waiting (this time around my book of choice was a guide on how to make the terrible twos “terrific.” I already have it all figured out, though – just leave them at home with Grandma while you take long weekend trips!). Since everyone’s traveling to and from the same rough spots, I also got to make a couple of cheer friends, which was nice because it gave Mike extra people screaming his name and also gave me more of an excuse to watch the race. Sometimes I forget what a special thing it is to see that many people so deeply involved in such a crazy endeavor.

Everything really was perfect for the race. I was bundled up because I was more or less stationary and also in the shade, but I could tell the runners were all doing really well. So when Mike shouted “I’m going to break 2:53” when he passed me at Mile 19, I certainly got excited. He’s been hoping to PR for years. And when I spotted him in the distance coming down the final stretch at just after 2:50, I absolutely lost my mind. To those of us who don’t run it would seem like shaving off almost 2 minutes over a 3 hour period wouldn’t be a big deal. But it is. It’s a huge deal. I was so proud.

And I have to say, as much as I have tried pleading, betting, bribing and just plain old begging to get him to shave that ridiculous beard, it sure does make him easy to spot on the field of runners.

After the snafu with dinner I decided it was best to go ahead and make a post-marathon brunch reservation at Erie’s top-rated restaurant, a French place called Bertrand’s Bistro. This turned out to be a fantastic place to celebrate Mike’s PR. Not because of the mimosas or other drinks – of which there were plenty – but because the brunch included all-you-can-eat made-to-order crepes. We took so many of them down that at the end the chef started to send out half-portions. We were so stuffed we were actually glad.

And even gladder later when we realized that nothing is open in Erie on a Sunday night. I mean, nothing. We ended up with a pretty decent pizza from a local hole-in-the wall recommendation, but there was absolutely nowhere interesting for us to go had we insisted on a sit-down meal. Good thing all we wanted to do was sit around in our motel room and eat pizza and watch cable anyway. Ahhh the joys of being kid-free.

Mike went through the trip home (I made him drive all the way back!) so I won’t go through that again, but I will say that our visit to Ann Arbor was also a highlight. We got to have dinner and stay with friends who we just don’t see often enough. 

Two back-to-back marathons coming up in a few weeks... you just might hear from me again soon!

Birmingham - The Wife's Perspective

This post is definitely waaaaaay after-the-fact, but I’ll keep it brief. I feel like I’m on a role after the last post. Not enough of a role to go back very far in time, but I can go back this far.

Alabama. Birmingham. We got grandma and grandpa to watch the little person for a long weekend and flew in. The trip was also a “babymoon” given that our second little person was due to join us not two months later. We stayed at the Westin, and the staff there might have been the friendliest we have ever encountered. Which is a good thing, because we spent a lot of time with them. A lot.

The Mercedes Benz Marathon is one of the more condensed, easy viewing, and smoother running events of a large size that we’ve participated in, and for that alone I want to recommend making the trip, but Birmingham. Oh Birmingham, how you disappointed me.

The problem? There was absolutely nowhere to go, at least without a car (which we didn’t have, thinking that by staying in the downtown of a big city we’d be within walking distance to most everything anyway. Wrong). We even went to the expo TWICE just to kill more time. We ended up venturing out a couple of times, but both times involved walks of approximately 2 miles through desolate neighborhoods. And keep in mind that I was also quite hugely pregnant.  It wasn’t too bad when we went out the first time during the day, but when we headed back out for dinner one night I let Mike know in no uncertain terms that we’d have to take a cab back. Which might have been fine, except a storm hit and the cab that we were told would take 10 minutes took over an hour and five phone calls to get to us. So after that we mostly ate at the hotel. Luckily for us Todd English’s PUB is a great restaurant. They were also in the process of building all kinds of new restaurants and other venues right in the Westin corridor so maybe for future races it will be much more of a destination, but if you go I’d definitely recommend you make sure to have a car.

Traverse City - The Wife's Perspective

A few words about spectating…It's not as easy as you might think it is.  People always give me the look – you know, the one – it says "um, and just what do you do while your strong, athletically-minded husband is running around for hours on end, young lady?"

Ok, so I’m not running during those hours, that's true. But here's a little taste of what I am doing, in the context of this particular marathon:  I get up when my husband gets up. Not only is he as loud as an elephant (or maybe two or three elephants) once he's up and moving around, but his nervous energy is palpable. It's impossible to sleep through. Plus, I have to admit, I'm always a bit excited about the race myself.

So, Traverse City starts out with me trying to find something for him to eat, since, as usual, we forgot to pick something up the night before. Luckily for me, we had mentioned his early start to Barb, the owner of our B&B, and she has set out muffins and fruit. Perfect!  Then we get ready and head out to the start. In Traverse City, we were close enough to ride our bikes in. It's about a 15 – 20 minute ride, and is extremely convenient because parking is always a nightmare, especially when you don't know the area! Now, it's something like 6 am, so it's pretty cold, which means I have to dress in about a half dozen layers, since I won't have running to keep me warm.

And then…we just hang out for about an hour. It's cold, my husband hits the porta potty no fewer than 3 times, and otherwise we just kind of… stand there. The tension is excruciating! Sometimes we play games, like trying to pick out the fast people, or to spot the worst tattoos (this particular game works MUCH better when you're standing around at a place like Six Flags; runners on the whole don't seem to have many tattoos, and it seems like my husband always wins for best AND worst when we only have runners to play with). Sometimes we discuss the "game plan" – that is, where he can expect to see me, which side of the lane I'll be on, etc. Sometimes we just do anything to keep warm.

After the race finally starts, I swing into motion. First, I have to get back to the bikes. Not only am I weighted down by my layers, but now I'm carrying his extra warm-up clothes, too. I jump on my bike and hightail it back to the B&B, where I throw my bike in the van (our awesome minivan, that is… and no, we don't have kids), jump in the driver's seat, and start heading back to the start and up Mission Peninsula.

Now, I know what you're thinking – I'm in a vehicle, right? How hard can this be? Well, I've told Mike I'll be at Mile 12 (which is also Mile 14, due to the out-and-back course). It's going to take him less than 1 ½ hours to get there, and I just lost about 20 minutes getting back to the van and ready to go. And now I have to drive back to the start, and then another 12 miles to try to find parking as close to the course as possible. We drove the course the day before, of course, but that was a whole different experience. Now there are a bunch of random (to me) road closures and detours, and more-than-usual numbers of police officers and other drivers, and mostly I just crawl along. And this whole time, I'm totally stressed out, just hoping I can manage to find the appointed spot, and get there before he does.

I finally find my cross street and start driving towards the course. There are cars absolutely everywhere, so the first chance I find to park, I take it, and whip my bike out of the back (see, minivans are REALLY convenient sometimes), jump on, and start wildly pedaling up the road. UP the road. Because I'm going uphill. And I'm not built for this.  I finally get to the right spot, totally out of breath. As my husband alluded in his post, I did not make it for his pass at Mile 12. But I was there for Mile 14!

And then I had to jump in the car and do it all again, in reverse. I did make it back in time to see him finish. I didn’t know how much he had been struggling throughout the race until the end. I was proud of him for not giving up (although giving up is not something I've ever seen him do, in any context).  And then he tells me he wants to take the bikes back up the peninsula to ride around.

Yes, being married to him certainly IS exhausting.

The Prequel - The Wife's Perspective

It became very clear to me very quickly after Mike and I started dating that he had a huge amount of innate talent, but not a lot of discipline to harness that talent. For example, his "training" regimen for the 2007 marathon (the first of our relationship) consisted of a couple of 5-7 mile runs a couple of times a week, and once - once! - he added in a half-marathon. Most people training for a marathon run significantly more than that, even just in the early weeks of training! And then he got up on the day of the marathon and just ran. 26.2 miles. 26.2 miles in the hottest Chicago marathon on record. And finished it so quickly, that we didn't even know the organizers had shut the race down after 3 1/2 hours (due to the heat) until we got home later that day.

It was then that I had the thought that if that's what he could accomplish with so little training, he could absolutely move mountains with the right program. It took a while, but I did finally get him to give the CARA group a try, and I knew right away he made the right decision. He enjoyed his runs and learned how to run better and faster. On race day, he shaved exactly 22 minutes off of his 2007 marathon time, and 20 minutes off of his PR. But the best part? All the (south side!) friends he made through CARA. His running life truly changed, very much for the better!