Happy Monday!

I have four images for you today from yesterday, which turned out to be an interesting day.

Angie and Ben were running in the Quad Cities half Marathon.  They have both been running most of the Summer and lately Angie has been in the 11 mile range.  The half marathon is 13.1 miles and includes running over and then back across the Mississippi River.  The race started at 7:30 a.m. so Angie and Ben went down in the afternoon on Saturday and that left the grand parents to baby sit.  🙂

I got up at zero dark thirty hours and made the trip down.  I was a little later getting started than I wanted to and then ran into some detours but I made it to Moline with about five minutes to spare.  By the time I found a place to park and walked to the starting line, however the last of the runners / walkers were just down the street.  I saw the start but I was still a block and half away.  😦

So I amused myself with people watching.  There were a couple of guys flying drones over the race area, which I thought was a little risky but they had the newer drones and they preformed flawlessly.  There are actually 4 races that make up the Marathon.  There is a 5K run, a relay run, the half marathon and then the full marathon.  So I just got settled in when the 5K winners came through.  For the next hour and a half I watched them and the early half marathon runners finish.

I had no idea how long it would take to run a half marathon so I googled it and found that the average time for people in their mid 30 was about 2 hours 20 minutes.  Angie and Ben’s official time was 2 hours and 12 seconds.  A pretty good pace.

This little dog was just a few feet from me.  I loved his eyes and had to capture an image of him.  He was pretty well-behaved but would occasionally bark at some of the runners.  It was funny because he wouldn’t bark at most of the runners but once in a while a particular runner would go by and he would bark.  Didn’t matter what gender or color he would just selectively bark.  I wonder what he knew?

During my time at the marathon I saw some pretty inspirational things.  People who were physically disabled in a variety of ways, push through their obstacles and complete the run.  None was more inspirational than this lady.  She ran the 5K with only the assistance of this machine.  I would have taken a picture of her face but I was busy clapping for her until she was well by me.  Impressive what some people do with the challenges they have.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for stopping by the blog.

Enjoy your day and be careful.