The Marathon

So...did I mention Ben ran a marathon??? True story. Of course blogging about it has been a little delayed but what can I say...story of my life :) Anyway, Ben ran a MARATHON! Actually his second full marathon. Because he's a rockstar. Obviously.

In order to properly cheer on our participants, my mom has a carefully planned route of awesome stops throughout the marathon where we hold signs and yell and generally just try to be high energy...ya know, to keep everyone motivated! This year, I wanted to pay special homage to Ben so in addition to our signs I also made shirts for the girls to wear. Unfortunately it was pretty cold for the non-runners and the t-shirts ended up being covered with sweatshirts and blankets, but they were still pretty cute!

   
 And this year I googled to find some good signs. Thanks to Jenna who came over and helped me make all the signs! While watching Easy A. Which is HILARIOUS. But don't watch it mom...not your style :). Anyway, we wanted to do some specially for Ben, but also wanted to generally support everyone who decided to wake up at the crack of dawn in 40 degree weather to run 26.2 miles :)

We are so proud of Ben for how well he did! We actually had to skip two of our regularly scheduled stops because we didn't have time to get there before he would have already passed! Pretty crazy, right?!

The girls were SO proud of their daddy!!! They loved jumping out of the car and running to each stop to wait for him to come. Then they would yell and cheer and try to get to him as fast as they could. And then Bryar would cry when he was gone! (She was quickly consoled each time though since we packed up right away and headed to the next stop to "find daddy again") Overall we all had a blast getting out and supporting Ben in his awesome accomplishment.

But...here's the thing. Ben obviously has some kind of major conspiracy going on. We are INCAPABLE of getting a legitimate, clear "crossing the finish line" picture! I can't figure out why, but it just doesn't seem to happen (hence my conspiracy theory...there is no other explanation). 2 years ago he ran the half marathon and we actually missed him finishing because he was being too speedy (sad!). Then last year they moved the finish to the 50 yard line of memorial stadium and we had some camera malfunctions that ended in us missing getting his finish on film (stupid point and shoot cameras!). Then there was this year. This year I was DETERMINED that we were going to get a good shot of Ben crossing the finish line. Epic fail. I had my mom take a picture of the big screen and I was going to get the actual crossing. My mom was able to get a picture of the big screen. It's a little blurry but better than what I got. I honestly laugh now every time I see the picture I took...let's just say a wind gust+big flag=blocked shot. Haha!

***I would just like to point out that the conspiracy is real because there is a photo service that takes pictures you can purchase from the marathon website and ALL 3 pictures of him running across the line he had his eyes closed!!! I mean come ON, seriously!?!?

It took Ben about a half hour to get across the start line (10,000 people ran this year!) so his OFFICIAL finish time was actually 4 hours 13 minutes 38 seconds! He actually dropped 57 minutes (yes...as in almost a full HOUR) off of last year's time! I guess that's what doing some training will do for you :)

 Congrats Ben, you are AWESOME!

P.S.