With this year's marathon Kate fulfilled a life-long dream of going to New York, though I don't thing she ever intended her "dream trip" would include a 26.2 mile run with 42,000 of her closest friends through the Big Apple and the boroughs.
We weren't invited able to go on this trip. She went with a gaggle of her Des Moines friends and left Mom and Dad behind. I wasn't too concerned. She's a grown woman with just a little ADD and a disdain for anything that resembles boredom. A frightening combination to travel to the Big Apple, indeed. But she has dependable friends, some of whom are familiar with the big city.
I was pretty calm about things until last night when she called and said "I don't remember training for this."
Oops.
She was so struck by the big city, seeing STOMP on Broadway, and looking forward to crashing the Today Show next week, that the thought of running a little marathon today was not foremost in her mind.
As I followed her on Athlete Tracker, the marathon's servers crashed. Surely they knew her mother would be sitting in Iowa wanting to know where their daughter was on a Sunday morning?
They didn't hear my screams. I was so frustrated, I sent a tweet out about her at the starting line, and fortunately a friend of mine was able to log on to the site, scream "GO! GO!" at her computer monitor while on the phone with me, and send me screen shots of her progress late in the race.
She crossed the finish line, sent me a text saying she survived, bemoaned the hills, and made me proud - again. What grit. She later said she about threw up with 3 miles to go.
"I think it was the Snickers bar the guy handed me on the course." That's my girl. Never lure a dietitian with chocolate on a marathon course.
Here's a shot of her finishing up in Central Park, dressed in a green bubble suit. Doesn't she look fabulous? (You may need to click the image to view her).
Image courtesy of PhotoBucket
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