First of all, running a marathon was a cool thing to imagine, but then once you sign up, you actually have to do it.
So we started training and it wasn't so bad! After our first hour-long trek through the romantic cobblestone-streets of Prague and down the banks of the Vltava River, we were like, hey! Maybe we CAN do this! We were pumped and optimistic. About a month in to training, we bought new shoes. Now we're getting serious...
Then the runs started getting longer and the cobblestones not so romantic (in fact, we began to hate the cobblestones). We started saving the long runs for Saturdays and we found a nice black-top path that was close to home and forgiving to our knees. Unfortunately, when you live in the middle of Europe and 4 hours of your Saturday is taken up by an activity that shuts your body down for the rest of the day, your mood starts to deteriorate.
Here's where the marriage lessons kept popping up. How is it when you are both so run down and your mommies are continents away, that you're supposed to support each other?? This marathon became our marriage teacher. It was pretty cool the way we were learning how to bring each other up and how to work together when we're down. We were learning about what were the types of things we needed from the other. Like I learned that asking a lot of questions and talking about what we could eat once we got done was NOT a way to boost Tom's spirits. Tom learned that not answering my questions was not a good way to boost mine.
Remembering that we love each other and it's not the other's fault when we feel down or stressed or tired. We just feel down or stressed or tired and when it's just us in the flat, the other person gets to hear about it. I bet you learn all these things anyway, but maybe a marathon and living in a different country became our fast forward pressure cooker (in a great way).
So anyway, we finally tapered down our running distance, booked our hotel (first time in a real hotel instead of airbnb/couchsurfing/guesthouses), and our sleeper train to Warsaw. That's when we started getting excited.
[The reason we chose the Warsaw marathon was because it was exactly on the day of our anniversary. The reason we chose to run a marathon on our anniversary was because the reason we got together in the first place is because we watched the Chicago Marathon together. Tom's Polish. Boom, destiny.]
So Friday night, we arrived at the train station at 11pm. We've taken a sleeper train before, but the sitting in the seats with 5 other people in the car all facing each other with no leg-room kind of sleeper train. We splurged for the lay-down car this time and were crazy-surprised when we found our car this time. It was like a mini hotel room!
There was a sink in the corner, comfy comforters, and a nice man comes and wakes you up in the morning and brings you coffee and a croissant!
When we arrived in Warsaw on Saturday morning, we found our hotel, dropped off our stuff, had an incredible breakfast and headed to the expo to check in for the race!
Cool stadium huh? This was the location of both the expo, AND the finish line. Woo!
We found the map of the race and our names in the "C" of the "racebook".
No backing out once you're in the racebook.
So here's what the finish line looked like without all our screaming fans :)
Then after a ton of free samples of gels and goos and protein bars, we went back to the hotel to sit on our butts, rest our legs, and research a place for a carbo load.
We woke up and kind of anxiously ate breakfast and made our way slowly to the stadium. The weather was PERFECT for a race. We checked in our stuff, went to the bathroom like 50 times, then made our way to the starting line
That's where we found our pacemaker...
That bunny and those balloons kept us focused!
So we started! The first 10 k was pretty sweet. Everyones cheering and pumped up.
Then it gets harder.
But there are banana stands and little kids giving high fives and 60 second concerts and middle-schoolers handing out cups of water and cheering for you in English because "Megan" or "Thomas" certainly aren't the spelling of Polish names...
We also got to run past and through a lot of cool places! The castle gardens were my favorite...
There were sculptures
The Royal Castle
Ladies on stilts giving high fives
This guy was at kilometer 39...
So we got to 40 K (just 2 kilometers to go) and we turned a corner with a marching bland playing and saw the stadium. I gotta say, that combination was like a kid seeing Santa's boots poking out of the chimney.
Then we were done!!!!
And then they gave us fleece capes and soup to keep us warm. It was funny, everyone was moving slow or huddled over eating soup with a huge blanket-cape hanging on them.
It was like a zombie apocalypse!
Then we ate huge cheeseburgers and hobbled back to the hotel. We found some strength to go out to a cool place for our anniversary dinner where we ran into a big group of people wearing Detroit Marathon gear (they were actually from Detroit-so cool)! So we chatted it up with them.
Then we shuffle stepped back to the hotel past this stuff...
Then the next morning, we took the train home.
When we got back we had an e-mail waiting for us from Momma Hardin that told us Tom has relatives who live in Warsaw, wah wah...hehe.
It was a super memorable anniversary/crazy marathon trip. Thanks for reading :)
