Dallas White Rock Marathon

HE DID IT!!!! I'm so proud of Aaron. He ran the Dallas marathon last Sunday, December 14 with his best friend Matt. I was surprised at how emotional the whole thing was. Trent, Drew, and I got there a little earlier than I expected so we actually were right up at the finish line. I think we got there right after the first place finisher crossed the finish line, so we knew we had a while to go before Aaron came across. My sister and her boyfriend joined us a while later and got to see Aaron finish also. Like I said, it was pretty emotional to watch even complete strangers finish this huge accomplishment. At one point before my sister got there, there was a guy who fell right in front of us, maybe 10 yards from the finish line. You could just see that it was a huge struggle for him to get back on his feet. He just couldn't get his legs to work. The crowd was going wild cheering for him to get up and finish. It looked like it was the hardest thing he had ever done, and he finally made it to his feet and crossed the finish line with the whole crowd cheering. It brought tears to many eyes, mine included. I saw other people who were just struggling to put one foot in front of the other, and I'm thinking, Lord, please don't let Aaron come up here like that. I don't think I could take it. But he and Matt were smiling as they crossed the finish line. I was so glad when I finally saw him. We started yelling and waving to him as soon as we saw him, and I was so glad he actually saw us because there were so many people next to us that would be yelling at whoever they were there to support and the runner would just be so focused on the finish line that they couldn't even hear their loved ones. But Aaron saw us right away...

Here they are at the moment they crossed the finish line.

He finished in 4h:23m:46s. There's a pretty cool results page here where you can see all sorts of stats on how he did. Also, they televised the race on Channel 8 that day and the boys and I were still in our hotel room when it started so we watched it for a few minutes. I told Trent to look for Daddy because he's somewhere in that crowd (of 17,000 people!), all the while thinking there's no possible way we will spot him. Well, all of a sudden I did spot him right before he disappeared off the bottom of the screen. I yelled, "There he is, Trent! Look!" Of course, it happened so quick that by the time I even started speaking, he was already gone. But it was pretty neat to see him right as he was starting. I am so, so proud of him, I can't even begin to express how much! He's been pretty sore this week, but of course it gets better every day. He's my Superman! :)

Here they are after we found them in the huge crowd...still standing, still smiling!