Mesquite Marathon 11-21-09

Okay, so a little bit of background for this race....
Dean and Braden had a really disappointing run in the St. George Marathon. After all that training, they didn't want to end the year on a bad note. Dean found this Mesquite Marathon, and it was just 7 weeks after the St. George marathon. That would give them time to recover from St. George, and get ready to try another marathon. We had already signed up to run the Snow Canyon half marathon 5 weeks after St. George. EJ was happy with her time in St. George, so didn't need to run this marathon, could just do if for fun, or not, either way. Dean had visited the Doctor, and got a shot in his hip the Monday before this marathon, so hopefully wouldn't have a pain in his hip pain that he had been suffering since the Snow Canyon Half marathon. (The Doctor told him he would be crazy to run a marathon 5 days later.) The days leading up to the race, his hip was still really painful. He was disappointed that the shot didn't work, and not able to train because of the pain, but he wanted to run this race anyway.

Here are the boys at 5:15 am, off to catch to bus to the starting point of the marathon. (Erika opted to be a cheerleader, photographer, and ambluance if needed for this race.)

Here they are at mile 13. Dean's hip isn't giving him any problem. It hurt a little for the first 3 miles, but then he didn't notice it.

Dean and Braden found a few new best friends. They stayed with these men through most of the race. Male bonding I guess.

Meanwhile, Julie was running the half marathon, and was running at an awesome pace on a really harsh course.

Julie did amazing! She got a 1:44 - 3 minutes off her half marathon time from 2 weeks ago, and on a much harder course!

Michelle Perry and her kids were anxiously awaiting Tyler's finish in the Marathon. He was aiming for 3:15, but had a disappointing 3:24. 26 minutes slower than his finish at St. George, just to give you an idea of how hard this course really was.

This was Tyler's 8th marathon for this year. He says he will never come back to run this course, it was horrible.

Juile took 2nd in her age group. We still don't know her overall, but there weren't many ahead of her, it will be fun to see her overall place.....did I mention she did awesome!


Tyler assured us that Dean and Braden would be a ways behind. No way they would be even close to 4 hours on this course....but here came Braden! Braden got a 3:52...3rd place in his age group and about 26 minutes off his St. George time!
but wait.....where's Dean?
Braden left him at mile 20. We were all pretty anxious waiting for Dean to come around the corner....Finally, at about 4 hours, here he came! That was awesome. Braden, who had just finished running a marathon, decided to wander down to cheer Dean on. Then it looked like Dean was falling down! That close to the finish? No way was Braden going to let that happen! He took off running to make sure Dean finished!

Dean had trouble with cramps in his calves, so he was just stretching them...scared us to death!

Braden escorted Dean to the finish line, and Dean got a 4:05! 14 minutes off his St. George time! And this was not an easy course!

After the race, in the events tent they were giving away prizes by calling out random bib numbers. There weren't very many people that went inside the tent, so the announcer started looking for bib numbers and would just call out the ones he could see. We caught on to this, so Julie got her number called, and went up and graciously accepted her gift. Braden paraded around in front of the announcer, and the guy never called Braden's number. Finally, Braden stood on the chair and waived his arms and pointed to his bib number. The guy was laughing, and called out #268....Braden's number was 263, so Braden had to correct him, and wait for him to call out his number. It was so dang funny! So he gets his prize, and he open's it, and we don't know what the heck it is! Julie got a cute mug set for her prize....we tried to figure out what to do with Braden's prize, and decided it was a back massager. So Julie rubbed it all over Braden's sweaty back! Gross! Then we figured out it was a wine glass holder, so Braden put it back in the box, and went up and exchanged if for another cute mug set!

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