Race Day!

Well race day is here. For Tunes anyways. She'll post her full race report, so I'll give this thing from my perspective.

We got up super early, 3:30AM. Right away, my whole job today is to make her life as simple as possible and try to make her feel at ease and feel confident before the gun goes off. I got her breakfast ready ASAP so she could get the solid food into her and get some other good stuff out. After that she sipped on some gatorade endurance and just chilled out for a while, stretching between trips to the toilet. :)

At just after 6AM we headed down to the shuttle. We were down at the race site by about 6:45AM. This is where I really start to miss the experience of being in the race, but I can't cry about it! I gotta be here for Tunes! :) She got herself ready as I took pics and I got her in the right spot in the corral. After that I ran way ahead past the start line (maybe 100m) and waited for her to pass. I got a sweet video of her going by and giving my a high five! :)

After they went by I started walking up towards the bridge, the route they were running. As I came up to the bridge I could see that they were turning left onto a road, so I looked at a map and saw that if I ran (or at least gave it a shot) I could take a short cut and beat them to the 3k mark, so I did! I got there just in time to see her go by and she saw me too! I even got a decent shot of her in the background, just feeling confident and lookin' strong!

After she passed there I knew it would be a while before I saw her again so I walked up to the mall at Surfer's and used the internet to check emails, check her 5 and 10k splits and give people updates on facebook! :)

After I was done there I started heading up the course again, as I knew the elites would be coming through soon. I saw the leader, who had a good 15 - 20 second lead and then a few more and a few more came through. I made it up to the ~8k/22k mark and waited for Julia. She came through and I got some great video of her, as I ran along side of her for a little bit. After the video ended, I gave her some water and she gave me the bottle back. Then I sprinted ahead for about 30 seconds, stopped and braced for some photos. I put the camera on continuous which takes like a photo every second and got a bunch of great ones. I did this for literally about 3k! I managed to get some really great shots of her at different spots between 22k - 25/26k.

My leg was eventually cooked around 26k so I wished her good luck and told her I would see her at the finish!

I slowly made my way back to the finish area and watched some people come by, waiting for my little Tuna. She came through the finishing chute at around 4:10 (4:08 chip time) and I got a good photo of her there. I was so proud!

She finally came out of the finishing area and I was able to give her a hug and congratulate my little marathoner! I am so proud!

After letting her catch her breath we started looking for the shuttle to get ourselves home. She wanted gummy candy. haha, so when we were waiting for the bus, I took off runnin' around lookin' for a convenience store. I finally found one and got her her treat, but pretended I couldn't find anything until we were ACUTALLY on the bus, just to give her a little surprise.

Sunday night we went out for Indian Cuisine. Jubes is in rough condition! Like any marathoner, she's hoblin' around pretty good. Dinner was great.

After dinner we came home and I gave her a little leg massage to try and keep the blood flow movin' around in those legs, then off to bed early as it was a looooooooong day!