Ingrid and I spent the previous evening and night with my dad, and got to the race start pretty early to see Dad off on the marathon. We stopped at Subway to keep warm and use the bathroom, and then headed over to our race start where we met up with Paula and Tommy. Paula and I sent the faster two off as we hung back and settled into a nice walk pace with sporadic runs. Truthfully, I could have been picked up a little sooner than we were, but Jeremy wasn't keen on the idea of us veering off the course in earlier neighborhoods.
As we entered the lake, we knew we just had a little more to go, and the timing worked out perfectly as Jeremy was just pulling up as we approached the meeting spot. We went to Jeremy's house to pick up Jessi and Jayce and then started on what turned into the worst commute ever to the Light Rail and then to Ravens stadium (really, it would have been faster to just have continued the race). We met up with Ingrid and Tommy and then hung around to see Dad finish -- under the time limit, mind you, except they had already started tearing down the festival and they didn't call out his name, the one thing he was looking forward to. It made us all really mad, and we probably will skip this race next year.... but Dad finished a great race and got a ride home to his chocolate cake, saved from the previous night's dinner, as Ingrid and I set back to Virginia.
All in all, not a terrible day.... 7 miles is still better than sitting on the couch, which is exactly what would have happened had we not gone though with the event. A shower and a nap were nice before enjoying several pitchers of sangria that evening with Joann and James, followed by an inadvertent late night on the town (at Town) with Dan, Cori and Amanda (oops!).
