Mercer Island Half Marathon

Bret, his mom, & his sister are running another half marathon in a few weeks, which means I better get the post done for the one they ran at the end of March.

Yes, I said the end of March.

Ahem.

Anyway, at the end of March, Bret and his mom ran the Mercer Island Half Marathon.  When they did the Seattle Half last November, my sister Christina came along and we scrambled around Seattle to cheer them along.  For the Mercer Island Half, we added my father-in-law (otherwise known as Papa T) to our cheering section as we zoomed around Mercer Island.  And I have discovered that, for some reason, I hear the Wicked Witch of the West music when I am driving in a hurry to get to the next cheering destination. 

We were amateurs back in November for the Seattle Half, checking the Thomas Guide on the fly and driving willy nilly around Seattle.  But not this time, oh no; not this time.  This time I printed out the course map in advance, estimated Bret's average speed per mile, and jotted down several possible cheering locations.  Oh yes, I was taking this Mercer Island Half Marathon much more seriously.

We got to the first location and settled in to wait.  Christina and I ran a few picture drills to stay alert.  We were determined that our picture taking skills this time around would not turn out like before.   (Taking it much more seriously, indeed.)

But alas...

See, the problem is that in the excitement of the moment - the moment of "There he is!  YAY!!" - everything goes all thumbs and all the picture drills in the world haven't helped. Observe:

Bret on the far left of the picture...

Bret on the far right of the picture...

And that's Mary (i.e. Bret's mom/Meemo) waving from behind the woman wearing #1577 in the foreground.

Sigh.

Well at least we got one good picture at this first stop...Go Meemo!

So it was on to cheering-destination-number-two and hopefully better picture taking.  Mission accomplished as far as the cheering section was concerned:

But the fate was not to be the same for our runners. 

I had remembered that my camera has a snazzy "Continuous Shooting" mode.  Brilliant!  Inspired!  Magnificent!  I would simply hold down the button and let the camera click-click-click away as Bret ran past.  Why hadn't I figured this out earlier??

Well, here's why (and please keep in mind that I wasn't looking at the camera's view screen to see what it was capturing in the moment - I was just holding down the button and moving the camera to follow him as he ran by - so the captions are my thoughts as I was reviewing the pictures later):

"Oh good!  This first one caught him on the left of the screen...but it's so blurry! Hmm..."

"Not as blurry...this is where he was getting ready to hand his backpack off...must've been bothering him to run with it."

"Hey, you're not my husband.  Where did he go?"

"And you're not my husband's legs."

"No really:  where did he go?"

"?"

"?????"

"@#%?!"

"Finally!  But he's so blurry...and close!  Was the camera on zoom?"

"What is that?  His license?  Why would he be handing off his license?  Is it a note?  Ok, Cheryl, that doesn't even make sense.  Why would you think he'd written a note while running a half marathon?  Jeez!  (Stop to ask Wayne what it was)  Ah, the remains of a Gu wrapper.  Now *that* makes sense!"

"Well, darn."

"All that excitement about the Continuous Shooting function and I didn't even get a good picture of him!"

When Mary came by a few minutes later, I had zoomed the camera back out and it made a big difference:

So then it was a mad dash to the finish line to find a place to park the car and cheer them their last few steps.  It was here that I remembered that, earlier in the week when I was commenting to Bret that I hoped the picture-taking worked out better this time around than it had for past runs, Bret had said we should just take a video.

Hmm...sure wish I remembered what Bret had said back at the beginning of the run!  (I also need to note that Christina took the videos...my videography skills have yet to be proven under race-day pressure.  Guess we'll see what happens in a couple of weeks!)

After the race, Gabe revealed his team spirit via his onesie:

After the the run we decided that we should spell it "Meemo" instead.  Every time I see the onesie I chuckle...I still read it as "Memo" (i.e. memorandum - but you probably already knew that, right?  Just making sure.  Wouldn't want you confused as to why I'm chuckling.  Although maybe that adds to my air of mystery.  Or lunacy.  Hmm...)

Good job Mary & Bret!