From the Emerald City to The Emerald Isle: November 2014

On the morning of the Marathon Expo, we met for the normal Saturday running group. We did a short one, pushing Norah and Maria came and pushed 4 month old baby Ezra on his first group-run.

It was a gorgeous sunny morning.
Afterward, we all headed in to the RDS (Royal Dublin Society/convention centre) for the Dublin Marathon Expo - a pretty huge to-do.

"Norah Cherledr" she wrote on the big wall.

A zoom-in on the shirt I had printed for Norah. This is our same logo on the club's running shirts - just Norah-size.

I'm not sure I ever wrote about our t-shirts - but basically we decided to finally get them after over 2 1/2 years of running together. I worked with our friend Vanessa who's a graphic designer and she and I came up with two amazing logos (though 90% Vanessa's creativity). I talked with a friend who has a running shop here in Dublin and we were able to get 68 free technical running shirts donated from Brooks. (an amazing running brand) So, the shirts were taken care of - all we needed was the design and a printer. In the end, we got the designs printed by a really great company and the total cost per shirt was only €3.70! Not too shabby. So, my main job in October was to get those shirts collected from the printers and distributing all 68 of them (which I somehow managed to do, before the marathon on Oct. 27th).

Here were the shirts straight from Brooks - so exciting!

Here's a picture front/back:

So Vanessa and I wanted to incorporate some of the symbols from the places where we run - from Killiney, to Dalkey, to Sandycove to Blackrock and Booterstown - this is generally our 'turf". So we included to large Obelisk atop Killiney Hill (the most grueling of runs), and the Martello towers which dot the coast line in Dublin and obviously, the piers where we all started. So it reads, Dun Laoghaire Pier Runners (DLPR), Est. 2012.

And here is most of the group who ran the Dublin marathon - there are 11 here but we had 17 runners in total!

The signs for the Big Group - the sign Sarah made for my marathon - (edited to read "Wayne") and then Norah's sign which reads:
"Mume is luvle, Dad, U eet Icicles. Norah, GloreU, Norah. Bi Norah Dykstra. I Can."

I saw this online, after creating my signs but wish I would've used this instead! :)
And a couple of Wayne's long training runs before the big day. He trained for about 10 weeks, increasing distance from 6 miles twice a week to doing that 3 times per week, plus a long one on the weekends. Those long ones went from 10 miles up to 21 miles. Here are two of the 20-21 mile runs with the group on Sundays in September, October.

Leg drains! We learned these from our friend/coach, Mary Jennings. These are a lifesaver to do after a 20+ mile run. The only difficulty is getting your legs back down and rolling back up to standing.

Wayne all ready to go on Marathon morning - walking out at 7 am.

I drove with a good friend Maria, her daughter and the new baby Ezra. We had a ball together! As we arrived at our first cheering spot on the route - Mile 10 in Chapelizod, we got to see the elites run past. First the 'peloton' of Kenyans and Ethiopian runners went past - and then later you see the cyclist with the sign "Lead Irish Man" - and this guy. (He came in 3rd, I believe and is a full-time primary school teacher in Dublin. An incredible feat as usually, for elites at this level, this IS their full-time job). And not long after we saw the bike for the lead woman, and then the lead Irish Woman.

Norah holding her sign and the bucket of Jellies we handed out to weary runners.

Our dear friend Sallie! The fastest woman of our 17 runners - beating, actually, every single male runner in our group, except one. This woman is one of my heroes (and did I mention, she called me the night before, for advice because she had a cough and a bad cold???) She is fiercely strong!

Norah doled out high-fives and got so many, we lost count at a hundred. We kept yelling, "Free Energy! Get a high five!"

And so exciting, screaming for Wayne as he came past us at the 10 mile mark!!! We saw all of our runners at this first spot, except about five of them.

Wayne was still smiling and able to wave at us at this point.... :)

Vikings need high-fives too.

(and the guy in front with the black bandana appears in the newspaper photo as well, at the end)

Ok, prepare for your heart to explode a tiny bit. Here are Geordan & Rory - (our friends' Kara & Joe's boys). Well, Kara & Joe's apartment is on the marathon route (at mile 19) so they came out to support Wayne. The boys made these signs. Geordan wrote this sign all on his own:

"I hope you win. And Pass the others. I love you. And you're beautiful"

Best signs I saw all day. What amazing friends to go and stand out in the cold. Also I didn't have internet on my phone to track Wayne's progress so Joe kept texting me how Wayne was doing at each of the checkpoints. (and he was doing amazingly well each time so it was super exciting!) Joe even ran after Wayne when he passed them there and gave him water.

So at this point, the day is hotter than had been on record for decades. In a normal year, they have around 180 casualties (meaning, injuries, heatstroke, heart problems, fainting, etc. and sometimes, death). Well, this year that number was over 300. Here we are at the 22 mile mark and there's our super speedy Sallie coming through! We screamed her name at the top of our lungs, waving our signs like maniacs and she somehow moved on over and flashed us a smile and a wave.

And here comes our John - in serious pain at this point but still mustering a big smile and waves for us, (which is more than most of our runners could handle at this point).

And our beloved Wayne - as he passed us here at mile 22, my heart sank into my stomach. At mile 10 he smiled and waved - here at Mile 22, he looked white and all he could do was shake his head, 'no' to me. It was so hard to see! I knew from my marathon that miles 22-24 are the toughest bits but I never felt that bad. 1) I ran much slower than he did and never altered my pace and 2) I ran with friend(s) the entire 26.2 miles. Wayne covered every single one of the miles on his own, at a very fast pace, and because he felt so good at mile 10, he sped WAY up (to what would be my sprint-pace) for nearly 3 miles. He knows now, he would never speed up like that again, but you can't know until you experience it.

In the end though, he finished only 10 minutes slower than his expected pace - which is just plain miraculous given how bad he felt. He was supremely strong. His final time was 3 hours 55 minutes - an amazing feat to come in under the four-hour mark on any day but especially so on a freakishly humid day. Even our group's very best runner, Billy, said it was much harder than his previous marathons and despite drinking every drop of water at every station, he was severely dehydrated by the end. One young man who collapsed on the course was taken to the hospital and he went into kidney failure as a result of the dehydration and stress on his body. Two weeks later, he was still in hospital. So, to say Wayne did really well in those conditions is a huge understatement.

And the next day, we see our very own Wayne, and dear friend Lindsey, on the cover of the Irish Independent Newspaper! Wayne is the tippy-top right corner and Lindsey is bottom-left in the orange t-shirt. What are the odds with 14,000 runners?

Two weeks before the marathon, our county council put on a Family Fun Run 5K in Dun Laoghaire. We went along with most of the running group. Norah was delighted because she got her first ever race t-shirt and a race medal at the end (all free for kids and only €5 for adults).

We had a ball.