I elected to not go up to Detroit last night with my brother – I took Percocet and got itchy instead. Good times. I was going to offer to go to the UT-UC game for a quarter or two last night with my Dad, but he had decided to go up to Detroit with Matthew, so I got to lay on the couch and sleep through the weird espn3.com broadcast of the funnest game we didn’t go to. Oh well, yay team! Very exciting, plus who doesn’t love seeing UC lose? No one.
So with my Dad not around to ride with up to Detroit this morning like I had planned, I made Brian get up early to go with me (not nearly as early as I would have had to get up if I was in Detroit or able to run…) and we headed up I-75. We found a weird parking garage to park in (and later not understand where to pay for, as the signs said to pay the machine but the machines were out of order…Detroit!) and got to see Matthew run by after the half-marathon/marathon split. He did not see us, and I was too flustered to flash any of my signs.
We found my dad, who had missed seeing Matthew run by Joe Louis Arena, and headed out to where the marathoners turn left off the mainland to their loop around Belle Isle. We saw Matthew and I held up a sign that said,”YOU CAN DO IT (put your back into it)!” – My signmaking is a little weird.
There’s always a ton of people pissed off about something at Detroit Marathon – when I ran the half 2 years ago, everybody was pissed about them running out of shirts, and this year, everybody was pissed off about the tracking app and tracking website not working. Lame. They never have these sorts of problems at Columbus or Chicago…Get it together, Detroit. Also, try to remove all the dead sea otters off sidewalks that spectators might walk on. Thanks.
We managed to hustle back to very near the finish line and saw Matthew run by with about the last 0.2 miles to go. I took a really shitty sideways video where you can sort of see Matthew skulk by and me scream “GO MATTIE GO!” but I don’t think it’s really worth the bandwidth to put it up anywhere. It was very exciting to see him do this…he worked really hard and ran a WHOLE MARATHON. I know how hard I worked two summers ago just to get into HALF-marathon running shape – and how I couldn’t ever do more than 14 miles…he’s amazing and dedicated. Very cool and also emotional..the human body is capable of SO SO much if you bother. That shit is cray.
We (of course) couldn’t find Mattie after the race…things were so confusing, despite my dad and my brother agreeing to meet at the medical tent (good thing we didn’t NEED a medical tent because we had no idea where it was…).
Matthew’s girlfriend, Nursey Amanda, couldn’t get out of work this weekend, but she told me what to put on her sign for him (it’s pet names or something…):
This was our special brother/sister sign that Matthew wanted me to hold up:
Here’s Mattie and me (note my baby chipmunk cheeks):
We walked with Matthew over to the hotel where he and my Dad had stayed last night, he took a yelp-filled shower (so much chafing!) that we laughed at. Then we had Matthew drop us off closer to the car (not too close – on account of the marathon course still being open) and said buh-bye. YAY MATTHEW YAY. Poor Mattie has to go in to work at 22:30 tonight. I hope he gets a nap and isn’t monumentally immobile.