I don't remember Zachary leaving the hotel room because I had finally fallen asleep and was out when his alarm went off and as he got ready. I woke up with my alarm at 7:00, pumped and Mo and I got the kids ready and we headed off to see as much of the race as possible. We contemplated using the metro to ride around to minimize the walking but considering how crowded we thought the metro might be and considering the fact that we are two able bodied people, we decided to walk everywhere. We took a very nice, leisurely walk to where we could watch the runners go by the 11 mile mark. We were getting text messages keeping us updated on where Zachary was in the race and we were able to see him run by.
From there, we walked to the finish line. That doesn't sound like a lot of walking but boy, oh boy, when you're pushing a stroller as Mo was or "wearing" a baby, it's a bit of a trek- we definitely got our exercise in. Liam and Malia were the perfect little babies- Liam needed to get out of the stroller once to move his legs but he did really well and Malia was just as content as could be in the baby carrier. Because of the lack of sleep, Zachary did not do as well as he wanted to- it's amazing to me that he traveled 26.2 miles using only his body but at a certain point his body, as he put it, just gave up on him. He still finished it and did a remarkable job but he had trained really hard and had an expectation that he didn't meet. It was a quiet ride home. Spoiler alert: he would run another marathon in two weeks and he killed it!
Zachary's running a marathon tomorrow- he's amazing. Grandma came up for the weekend to help me with the babies while Zachary was running so we went to DC the day before so that Zachary could leave from the hotel for the start line instead of having to wake up at the crack of dawn.
We took our time getting to DC- we stopped at Omega Sports to look for some costume materials for Halloween- we're going to be a football family- Zachary is going to be a coach, I'm a fan, Liam is the football player and Malia is the football. We were hoping to find some someone other than Redskins gear but failed. Looks like it'll be "Go Redskins!"
Then we grabbed some lunch and Zachary was so sweet and asked to take a picture with me! There aren't many of these.
Then we had to pick up Zachary's race day packet that had the course map and his bib. There was a crazy long line but, being the Marine Corps Marathon, they had a separate line for military members. Whew! Who knows how much time we saved. Inside, they had lots of vendors and this cool map of the marathon course.
Then the real fun began. We were staying at the Westin on M street. So I typed, "Westin Hotel, Washington, DC" and the directions popped up, just like that! We parked...the valet people took down the information for our car... unloaded the car... we got the kids out and walked inside. There are two Westin hotels on M street and we were at the wrong one. So we reloaded everything and everyone and went down the street. Once there, Miss Malia hopped right in bed.
Later that night, we walked to Smashburger- one of our favorite restaurants in Jacksonville, that we recently discovered is also in DC. It was so delicious.
We had come to DC so Zachary would get more rest than he would have had he had to leave early in the morning on Sunday. Hindsight is indeed 20/20. Liam did not want to go to bed. He was in a new place and did not have time for sleeping. Then Malia, my wonderful sleeper, decided she was going to have rare night of staying up late and waking up a few times during the night. What a disaster. We finally got to sleep around 3:30am and Zachary had to wake up at 5:30. Running a marathon on two hours of sleep is definitely not ideal. More on that later...
