Go far!

Howdy, Blogosphere! Did you forget about ole TeamVazac?

I must admit that I missed my "Race Day!" post Saturday morning because I was as anxious and nervous as an expectant father. Andrea toed the line at her first marathon. Race conditions were pretty good for a Bay Area runner: mid 40s, no sun(!) with ~10 mph wind at the start. The corral was so crowded that it took Andrea over 2.5 minutes to cross the START line. Had to have been very frustrating. Team Andrea had the route mapped out so we could see our fair maiden 8 times during the race. Eagle-eyed Tyler picked her out in the cluster at the 0.25 mile mark. Aunt Shirl-my-girl and Uncle Tim were reppin' and presentin' for us at mile 3.5 because we couldn't get there in time. Thanks Jeffro! We hear that at that first checkpoint, she had already settled in nicely with the 3:30 marathon pace group (8:01 minute/miles (!)), and the gloves were indeed off.

If you know Andrea the runner, you know that she a) doesn't like to run with people b) doesn't like to let people watch her run and c) doesn't like to talk about her running. It is as if she's embarassed to be so fast. Well she brought it strong on race day because every time she ran past us, she made it look incredibly easy. She always greeted us with an enormous smile, waved and shouted to us, and even blew us some kisses! I'm easily 20% sure that those were aimed at me. Or near me. I don't like to be over confident.

She made it look so easy in fact that we're already in discussions over a 2010 Wald Family Battle Royale Marathon Relay. Opening bid has the men spotting the women an hour which I don't think sounds fair because Jeffro will either skip the whole way licking an oversized lolly pop or race with floaties and a snorkel. And heaven forbid a knee-kicking midget is amongst us, Mary would race her portion so fast she'd be blurry! Either way though, the gauntlent has indeed been thrown down.

Bonus photos! Were the "hills" of Fargo tough? Not for our SF girl!

Bringing it back home, what can I say about Andrea? She rocked it. She ran a 3:38, qualified for the Boston Marathon, finished in the top 10% of her age group, and looked fantastic doing it. Folks, I've done a couple of these longer races and I need to stress to you how hard what Andrea did was. Especially on her first attempt at the distance. People don't run their first marathon and get everything 'right'. They build towards maybe hoping to have a shot at Boston, they don't crush it like a post-race Fresca out of the chute. Most first-timers consider themselves fortunate to finish. But this is, after all, Andrea we're talking about. In retrospect, maybe we shouldn't have been surprised. There's nothing this girl can't do. She did, afterall, hung the moon.

You never know how someone is going to feel after such a tough race, but Andrea was once again a rockstar. No one would have guessed that we'd close out Chubs after she crossed the finish line looking like FDR!

Now, assuming that I can get my fatass there.... Who's coming to Boston with us???