Pittsburgh Marathon 2012

Sunday was a beautiful day, and since we all get up bright and early these days thanks to EH we decided to head into the city to watch the Pittsburgh Marathon.  We had a few friends who were running the race and I always enjoy going to big events such as this.

The race started at 7:30 a.m. but we didn't get there until around 8:30.  My sister lives right on the race course so we were hoping to go to her house to watch the race.  But by the time we got into the North Side the race was already nearly an hour in and it was the section of the race where there were non-stop bodies of runners, and we were stuck on the wrong side of the street.

 Watching his first marathon

So we stood there for a minute or so, trying to figure out which direction to head, when a person started running straight towards us and gave us a sweaty, enthusiastic hug!  It was my college roommate, one of the few people we were really hoping to see, and somehow she spotted us on the side of the road even though we had only been there for about a minute!  It was crazy!!!

 There she is!

And then she was off, as quickly as she appeared

After that encounter we started walking around the course, trying to figure out a way to get through it.  Not even 5 minutes later we saw another person we knew, one of DH's co-workers.  I can't even imagine how many people we would have seen if we had actually been there for the start of the race given that we saw two people that we knew in the first 5 minutes!

We were walking on the sidewalk against the flow of runners, and it didn't take long until we started to see the "walkers" of the marathon.  Only a couple of miles in and there were a LOT of people already walking.  The good part about this for us is that it allowed for some breaks in the sea of people and so we were able to dart across the street and get to the other side, allowing us to head to my sister's house.

Of course, by the time we got there most of the runners were long gone and the walkers were just starting.  The walkers are not very interesting to me (sorry walkers, I know it's still impressive to walk 26.2 miles, but I'm one of those people that think marathons should be left for the runners) so we decided to walk downtown to the finish line area.

The sea of people clustered around the finish line area was incredible.  A lot of people who did the half marathon were just finishing.  I'm not sure what the process is but I think that when people go through the finish line they get their medal and anything else that is given away right there at the end, which means that the finish line area gets somewhat backed up.  If you were a runner and I'm wrong in my understanding, please correct me! But seriously, there were so many people there that I feel like some people had to have trouble getting to the actual finish line.

 

EH enjoying the fine weather

Allow me to gripe about our stroller for one second.  I love a lot of things about our stroller, but I am so annoyed that the sun shade is attached to the back of the stroller and can't extend any further than what you see right now.  It's basically useless.  However, I'm pretty sure that they fixed that problem in later models because DH's brother just got the same exact stroller but a slightly newer model and I'm fairly certain that the sun shade on his is hinged and not attached to the back.  In any case, the way ours is is stupid.  Anyone know of any good snap on sun shades that we can attach to the front? 

We got some food and sat in the grass in the shade watching all of the runners and spectators milling about.  People watching at these sorts of events is always interesting, and we were surprised at how many babies there were there!  EH was definitely interested in the other babies and I realized that we need to get him playing with more babies soon - he's definitely ready to be social.

An hour or so after arriving we decided to head back.  EH was getting tired and we didn't want to push him too far into overtiredness.  But I'm so glad that we went, so glad that we saw people that we knew, and for at least one whole day I was so motivated to get back into running again.  (That dream was quickly shattered that night though when I was up with EH from 12:30 to 4:30 a.m. and so deliriously tired the next day that I was actually dizzy.)  I do want to return to running some day soon though! Perhaps I'll sign up for a 5k to create an actual reason for me to start up again.