With only a 45 seconds off from her personal best, Cheryl has once again, completed another successful disappointment. The entire event was rather boring... for me. Mostly because I sat in a port-a-jon trying to stay warm. ( They are surprisingly comfy when it's cold and windy outside.) It was nice having "no major job" on this one. My only job was to take pictures at the start and finish. I was "some what" successful. (People kept getting in the way.... ) Cheryl is small, tiny, fast, and INVISIBLE... So the difficulty factor for me is always up in the stratosphere. Add in that she wore black, along with just about every other female on the course, and you can see why I don't have many pictures. But let's get started.
Very early.
Where is the light?
Another early morning race in the dark. And Cold! A chilly, frosty, windy morning this morning, and we arrived early to find the best possible parking spot. After waiting in line for he Port-a-Jons, Cheryl headed into the gates and disappeared into the crowd. =POOF!= Gone.
Cheryl gets ready to enter the gate.
Say goodbye. Oh! There she is...
Thankfully, the race started on time and there were no announcements. A simple "GO!" and they were off.
And there.
Just outside the start zone.
Snapping random shots of the crowd, I managed to capture Cheryl by accident. I got lucky!
Behind the guy in blue.
Mile 1 watch her disappear
But at mile 1, my fortunes were blacked by some guy in a blue and white shirt. Cheryl disappeared behind him and I only nabbed this one shot.
Check out those legs!
Muscular legs!
I walked back to the finish line and waited for Cheryl to run by an hour and a half later. She forced me to download an App to see her on the course. It worked surprisingly well, missing her exact finish time by only a few seconds! I think more and more races will begin adopting this App in the future. ( I hope, it was handy.)
Sexy legs?
She is really keeping up with that
guy stride for stride. Go Honey!
As she turned the last corner, I could see from a distance and started snapping blurry shot after blurry shot so I could at least point to the blob in the middle and say that was her. But the camera finally focused and I was able to capture those sexy legs... (That is all Cheryl is really concerned about... "How do my legs look?")
Cheryl races to the finish.
She is the dark shadow on the left.
And then she disappeared again. Finding Cheryl in a cluster of 4000 runners is like searching for a needle in a stack of needles. But eventually we did find each other and we went on to sample the Sam Adams 26.2 beer. (It was $5! Crazy!) We were both so cold and ready to go home, that I forgot to take the "after race photos.... So I snapped these ones in the driveway. Even Cheryl was wondering why she wanted to run a week after that Marathon. Runners do crazy things.
But, by far the BIGGEST event was the national Anthem singer. 2018 has been a hit or miss with the National anthem. Forget the NFL protests. I'm talking about the races. Some were awesome. Others... not so great. Bemidji did not even have one to kick off the marathon. Firecracker had a girl who could not sing the notes. BUT.... Des Moines has them all beat. They chose someone who did not know the song!
Not the greatest talent?
I don't know much about this person, other than they were on "The Voice" ( I gather this is a reality show?) You might assume that if you are on national TV, then you must be able to sing... And if you know how to sing, logically, you must know the words to the song you are singing.
Perhaps it was stage fright. Perhaps it was a momentary lapse in the US education system. But she forgot the "land of the Free..." Part. After an awkward pause... either she started singing the "ramparts" again, before someone helped her out. What ever the reason, I'm sure she will remember the song from now until eternity. One does not forget an experience like that and fail to learn something ( hopefully...)
It reminded me of the Naked Gun. Check out the video.... Kinda Like that.
Cheryl also noted that other people on the course could just show up with their karaoke machine and sing anything they wanted. Some people were pretty good. Other... really really BAD. One lady was singing "I need a Hero." It should have sounded like this....
But ended up sounding like this:
So other than that bit of entertainment. The race was simply normal. Cheryl missed her PR by just a few seconds, clocking a 1:39:26. Averaging a 7:35 minute mile pace. Kinda good for a normal person. But we all know Cheryl is abnormal. Maybe next year she will wait two weeks after the marathon to run a half-er. We can only hope she learns from her mistakes. In the mean time, three stops for donuts should help alleviate the depression.
And then she disappeared again. Finding Cheryl in a cluster of 4000 runners is like searching for a needle in a stack of needles. But eventually we did find each other and we went on to sample the Sam Adams 26.2 beer. (It was $5! Crazy!) We were both so cold and ready to go home, that I forgot to take the "after race photos.... So I snapped these ones in the driveway. Even Cheryl was wondering why she wanted to run a week after that Marathon. Runners do crazy things.
But, by far the BIGGEST event was the national Anthem singer. 2018 has been a hit or miss with the National anthem. Forget the NFL protests. I'm talking about the races. Some were awesome. Others... not so great. Bemidji did not even have one to kick off the marathon. Firecracker had a girl who could not sing the notes. BUT.... Des Moines has them all beat. They chose someone who did not know the song! 
No comments:
Post a Comment