Saturday, November 6, 2010

Dan Qualifies for the Boston Marathon!

Dan has been training for the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon for months. At first his goal was just to run another marathon. Then he decided he would like to qualify for the Boston Marathon. See you just can't sign up and run The Boston. There is a qualifying time that you have to meet for your age category. Dan had to run another marathon at 3 hours 20 minutes and 59 seconds to qualify for The Boston. I can't tell you all the hours that Dan put into training for this. Yesterday, we drove to Indianapolis to pick up his packet and stay the night. Today, 1,400 miles of training (since June 1) and four pairs of shoes later, he made it!! Dan's official time was 3 hours 19 minutes and 4 seconds! His pace was 7 minutes 36 seconds a mile. He came in 236th overall. He worked so hard. The girls and I are so proud!

Here he is, 7 a.m., dressed and ready. This is the "before" picture. Those are his snazzy racing shoes :)

Here he is crossing the finish line! The time on the clock is a little off from his official time. The official time is tracked by a chip attached to his shoe. It doesn't begin till he crosses the starting line and he was in Level 3 seeding so he crossed the starting line a little after the clock shown started. I was getting so worried. The clock said 3:18 and he hadn't come around the corner of the far building. I was getting a little teary eyed thinking that he wasn't going to make it. He came around the corner at 3:19 (by the finish line clock) and I wanted to tell him to hurry up! Skyeler was calmer, she told me that it wasn't going to take him a whole minute to run that short distance :)

Here he is getting his shiny, wrappy thingy. It helps him stay warm. We knew we were headed in the right direction on our way to the finish line when we saw a bunch of sparkling people headed our way. Unfortunately, it was still freezing at the end of the race and by the time we picked up his track pants and made our way back to the car, he was really cold.

The sight at the end of the finish line...the Indianapolis State Capitol Building.

Here he is with Aly and Skye inside the Convention Center. He told me I should have said his hair was a wreck. Who cares about his hair!! He just ran 26.2 miles :)

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