Steamtown marathon

This past Sunday was the 17th annual Steamtown marathon which takes place in the heart of Northeast PA.  It's rated the 6th best marathon in the country (for those who may be interested in doing it!).  It starts northeast of Scranton up in the mountains and goes down through the "valley cities" and ends in Scranton's city square.  It's supposed to be one for getting a great time because it's primarily downhill.

Josh had been pretty excited about running this for the past 2 years.  Last year, he waited too long to register and had to settle for Baltimore marathon.  This year, he signed up the day the registration started.  But then he was pretty sick from May- end of July and wasn't running at all.  With 9 weeks to go and his health on the upswing, he started training for the race.  All was going well until 4 weeks before when he ran a grueling 11 mile run on some pretty steep hills (common in our area).  Two days later, he got some sharp knee pains.  He took it easy for a few days, but those never went away.  After trying for a few weeks, he decided he better not run for a couple weeks if he was ever going to heal the knee.  He saw the chiropractor twice who determined the pain was from a very tight, bound up tendon behind his knee.  Only time, massages, and ice would help it heal.  Josh was very determined to still try the marathon even though he was under prepared and probably still injured.  I actually volunteered to do it for him so we wouldn't lose out on the $ we paid for the race.  Now I'm glad I didn't b/c I'm not prepared either (although I'm not injured).

So, Sunday morning, we packed up the kids at 6:30am and drove 45 min NE to Forest City up in the hills and in the middle of nowhere.

 

Josh decided to just run really slow and walk when needed.   I knew he was really discouraged especially since last year he ran nearly all of it and put up a pretty good time.  He had been hoping to improve on his time.  But "the odds were not in his favor" this year (to borrow a line from the Hunger Games).

The crowd of spectators in Carbondale

The kids watching the runners in Carbondale

Josh running in Jermyn

We drove to 2 watch points to cheer on Josh.  At the first one (Carbondale) 7.8 miles, we had wait so long to see Josh and when we did Josh was walking.  He said his knees (both) were killing him and he still wanted to keep going.  I saw him in Jermyn and he hadn't run much and now he was at 12 miles.  I left him to go to church.  We talked a few times and I found out he hadn't run at all after 12 miles. He was in so much pain that he just wanted to finish.  I felt terrible for him, but proud of him for having the determination to keep going.

We went home after church and had lunch, then we went back into Scranton to wait for Josh.   He was hoping to finish before 2pm.  I kept praying that he would indeed finish then.  I was watching the race clock and when the time read 5:49:00, I saw Josh crest the hill-- RUNNING! I was so proud of him.  He finally finished with a time of 5:50:28

 The boys were so excited that Daddy won the "silver medal"!

One very tired and very very sore marathon finisher