So what do you do after running 26 miles?  The very next morning you go to Country Kitchen for a rejuvenating breakfast and then load up the car and hit the road for a scenic four-hour drive to Kenai.  When we were first planning the trip I had read all of these wonderful things about Kenai and so we planned on staying here a night and enjoying the relaxing atmosphere.  Little did I know that what I was researching was the Kenai River area that extends for quite some time and not the city of Kenai.  I was expecting wilderness and woods and what we found was a pretty big city.  I say pretty big, but I mean by Alaska standards.  Fortunately we found a nice set of cottages overlooking the mouth of the Kenai River from atop the cliffs.  Unfortunately, according to the cottage owner, in about two weeks the mouth of the river would be crawling with salmon boats bringing in their catch from the day to the canneries.

The view from the cottage.

Regardless of missed expectations, the view was nice and very relaxing and gave us many photograph opportunities including a walk on the beach:

The walk on the beach revealed what was quickly forming as a clique of marathon runners and those that aren’t.  Mike and I were never allowed to walk near them or join in their marathon games.

But alas, after much harassment they eventually gave in and let us take our pictures with the stars that they are.

I discovered my new obsession of watching and taking photos of boats, it’s just a shame that we missed the performance of the salmon boats returning their bounty.

I also developed an obsession of taking pictures of various objects.

The stroll though the old Russian orthodox area was also in store.  Who knew these marathon ladies would be so interested in walking so much the day after running 26+ miles.

And finally after a relaxing drive, a relaxing walk, we chose to relax that evening with a few local beverages while grilling some reindeer sausage.  When Mike and I had our fishing trip we stopped off for dinner on our way back and I had my first taste of reindeer sausage.  It was so good, despite the over abundance of mustard, we tried to recreate that experience ourselves and in the store all we could find was “sausage with reindeer meat”.  Based on the taste I can only assume it was the same thing and I wish I could find it here in Texas.  Mike enjoyed it so much that he decided to turn the leftovers into beanie weanies.  This is where Mike also entertained us with his incredible joke about the difference between reindeer and caribou…”The reindeer is domesticated.”  Ok, it wasn’t really a joke, but after a few beers and some Sarah Palin arguments for some reason he decided to relay the fact to us in the form of a joke.

Waiting for the grill to heat up.

Are you ready to “get ya some” sausage with reindeer meat?

The clique actually let us eat with them.

And finally, Mike and his beanie weanies.

In the end, a slow relaxing day did us some good in preparation for what would be a somewhat action packed trip ahead of us, including Bears, Halibut Fishing, Whales, Seals, Kayaking, and the list goes on.  More on all of that to come in future posts.

Melanie has already provided her post describing her marathon experience, so this will be solely from my point of view as a spectator, supporter, and admiring husband.

Melanie’s day began with an early 5 am wake up and stretching and taping as quietly as possible not to wake me as I had gotten in late from my fishing trip from the day before.  So I thought it would be nice of me to get as she was walking out the door to give her a good luck kiss and snap a couple of pictures. 

I figured that this would make me a good husband, naturally Mike had to show me up by actually walking downstairs with Melanie and Andrea and taking pictures of them in the lobby and boarding the bus.

I chose to go back to sleep.

After resting for a few more hours Mike and I headed for the first checkpoint at the 9 mile marker.  Being concerned about traffic and fighting our way through the spectators we arrived a bit early as we quickly found the spectator crowd, much like the number of runners, is much smaller for this marathon compared to what we have seen in Dallas.  Fortunately this got us there before any of the runners and we were able to catch the one Kenyan before he blazed passed with no one else in sight behind aside from a car driving down the tank trail in the far distance.

And then about ten minutes later here came the closest thing to competition.

While waiting for the ladies to make it by we thought we had discovered the question of “does a bear ‘go’ in the woods” only to find out that it was just a runner that thought the observation area would be a good place to relieve himself.

Fortunately for Andrea the bear experience was over by the time she came around as jubilant as could be.

And then after a little bit of waiting, came Melanie with just as good of an attitude.  I will be honest, my eyes got a bit watery due to pride as I saw her from the distance.

Especially as she ran past with a proud display of why she was running.

Luckily, sandwiched in between Melanie and Andrea we did have a Superman sighting, so there was no concern for their safety along the way.

Our next checkpoint was around mile 13 and was a bad news/good news checkpoint.  Good news is that both runners were going strong, bad news is that due to the difference in pace between Andrea and Melanie we missed Andrea so Mike and I quickly realized that we would not be able to share the car on the trip and so Mike headed off to the next checkpoint while I waited amongst the mosquitos and trees waiting for Melanie.  I was very relieved to see her coming downhill around the corner and even more relieved that she was still going strong and seeming to be enjoying herself enough for a photo with the moose patrol.

After Melanie was well on her way I found myself wondering just what in the hell I was going to do with a bad Achilles and no car.  So I did what any common sense person would do and I started walking.  Not sure where I was going I just decided it was better than standing around, but it did afford me the chance to experience the neighborhoods of Anchorage, which surprisingly reminded me a lot of my childhood home in O’Fallon.  So on and on I walked until Mike worked his way back and picked me up along the highway that I decided was a good idea to walk down.  At this point we decided it was time to become even more strategic with our viewing points and settled with one more checkpoint that we would see each of them at the same place and then head for the finish line.

This brings us to mile 21 and gave Mike and I some time to relax a bit and realize that neither of us had eaten the entire day, but it was hard to complain considering our wives were running an extreme distance.  After a while of rooting on the many different runners heading through the park, it was Andrea to first show coming down the running trail. 

After calculating the pace we decided it was time for Mike and I to separate again and he headed for the finish line while I continued to wait for Melanie and as impatient as I can be I decided it was time to head up the trail and find her to help me from stopping the worrying and sure enough as soon as I started up the trail there she was and so began my relief and given that Mike was off with the car again I for some reason thought it would be a good idea to try jogging along with Melanie.  Happily she was doing intervals of running 3 minutes and walking 1 minute and so I was able to keep up.

After keeping up with her for a little over a mile and not sure where I was I figured it was time to try to walk the rest of the way to the finish line thinking that cutting through the city streets would be the way to go.  The only problem is that I got completely lost and luckily Andrea had just finished and so Mike was on his way to rescue me, yet again, somewhere in Anchorage (I owe many thanks to Garmin).

After being rescued I hurried to the finish line in anticipation for Melanie only to find out that she was still a mile away so as before I decided to head out.  This is where I was called a jock strap by a helpful police officer.  Actually he joked that I was an athletic supporter, which technically I was, but I’m pretty sure he was alluding to the jock strap.  After finding Melanie I hobbled along with her until she got to the track and finished out strong by running the very last portion to the finish.

All in all, it was a great day to support my wife and friend in such a great effort.  I to this day remain inspired by what they were able to do, but just not inspired enough to do a marathon on my own.  Perhaps a half marathon next year after everyone recovers from our 2011 LLS fund raising campaigns (Watch for the future post on the Light The Night effort in October).

After Mike and I returned from our fishing trip we thought it would be a good idea to run to the grocery store and put together some goodie bags for our wives upon their completion of the marathon and our thoughtfulness was rewarded in great bounty when we spotted Abe Lincoln. 

Here is the photo that I discretely took from my phone.

I realize he is a bit hard to see, but I was attempting to be casual about it.  Fortunately Mike didn’t deem it necessary to be too casual and I wish I had an actual camera so I could have taken pictures of Mike as he boldly walked up and snapped shot after shot until he felt that he was close enough.

We had a feeling that in his state of mind he had no idea Mike was right next to him snapping away with his phone.  It’s a shame the way some of our presidents let themself go once they are out of office.