{"id":195,"date":"2013-03-25T18:34:07","date_gmt":"2013-03-25T09:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/?p=195"},"modified":"2013-03-26T00:08:43","modified_gmt":"2013-03-25T15:08:43","slug":"dans-second-marathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"Dan’s Second Marathon!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not only did Dan have his second-ever marathon this past weekend, he KILLED it! The only one he’d done prior to this weekend was the Walt Disney World marathon, as part of Goofy’s Race and a Half Challenge<\/a>. His disadvantages were the merciless heat and humidity, and the fact that he’d run a half marathon the day before!<\/p>\n

First off, I should add that as much as I love running races, I really love cheering at them too! The night before the race I used my Cricut to make Dan a sign. Penny helped:
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\nWe took the trains from Tokyo to Ibaraki. It was the inaugural Koga Hanamomo Marathon, so that was exciting. We got to the race site and checked in with registration, then Dan got his bib on.
\nReady to go and representing in a Team Sparkle<\/a> skirt!
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\nThings moved pretty quick pre-race. Once he got his bib he made his way to the corral to stretch
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\nIt was only a few minutes then that he was off! I wished him luck and told him I’d find him out on the course!<\/p>\n

I took a gander at my all-Japanese race map and started to worry about finding him. The further you get from major cities in Japan, the less English you come across. I took my backpack, his backpack, and my hand made sign, and hit the road to find another part of the course to cheer for him at.<\/p>\n

So many runners!
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\nThere was going to be a big clover, where he would run up and down 3 of 4 streets of a single intersection. Perfect! But after 25 minutes of walking I realized I wasn’t even halfway there, and that this map didn’t exactly depict distance too well. I headed up to the next main road where I saw part of the race. According to my map it was the 10k mark. I checked on Endomondo<\/a> (gotta love technology these days!) and saw he was at the 8.5k mark. Perfect! For maybe 10 minutes I cheered other runners, then, after much worrying I’d miss him, I saw Dan!
\nI didn’t get many photos of him, because I wanted most the time to be spent entertaining him and taking his mind off the race!
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\nI “pep talked” him on Endomondo, which is a way to communicate w runners while they’re on the move, and told him I’d be on the right-hand side of the course. I snapped a couple photos and then grabbed my sign and started jumping up and down like a crazy lady. He got so happy when he saw me, I was so pumped!<\/p>\n

The moment was over all too fast and I had to strategize where to go next. I decided to try to head to the big clover of the route, but after 15 more minutes of walking realized I wouldn’t beat him to the finish line.<\/p>\n

I made my way back to the start, which was also the finish, and found a place on the bleachers to sit. I entertained myself w my phone and iPad mini, and it wasn’t long til the announcer informed us the winner was on his way!<\/p>\n

Seeing him cross the finish was ridiculously inspiring!
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Slowly more runners trickled in. Some were dressed pretty crazy!
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The time passed pretty quick, and after not too long Endomondo said Dan was about 2 miles out from the finish. I got up and hauled my stuff out of the finish area. It was quite the tease of a trail: Runners first rounded the running stadium, then entered and completed a lap on the track. That would drive me crazy!
\nI tried to get a picture of him here, but no luck! He was nothing but a blur! But I held up my sign again and he smiled. He tossed his Spibelt to me and kept going.
\nI then hurried into the track so I could catch him again but he didn’t see me. So I put the sign away and tried to get a picture of him crossing the finish: FAIL! Too many runners came in and stopped, so my view was blocked. There were some professional photogs though, so maybe we’ll see what they got.
\nGetting his medal
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\nHanamomo means peach flowers. His medal!
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He stretched and told me all about it. I was a little jealous, as I was also signed up to run this beast, but the ankle let me down. I was so happy for him though. And the amazing part: He shaved 70 minutes off his PR! Awesome!
\nOur running club isn’t a race, but we do call the first couple runners in the “front running bastards”. Today Dan was totally FRB, no matter his time. I like to say no matter what he does in life, he’s an FRB \ud83d\ude09
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Not only did Dan have his second-ever marathon this past weekend, he KILLED it! The only one he’d done prior to this weekend was the Walt Disney World marathon, as part of Goofy’s Race and a Half Challenge. His disadvantages were the merciless heat and humidity, and the fact that he’d run a half marathon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5,181,297,295,11,296,267,130],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dan","tag-fitness","tag-hanamomo-marathon","tag-ibaraki","tag-japan","tag-koga","tag-marathon","tag-running"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}