He finished Swine!

Ray decided to run the half marathon portion of the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati. We all woke up at 4:30 a.m. to head out the door by 5:00. They closed the streets by 5:30, so we needed to get down there before that.

By 6:30 they sang the National Anthem,



fired the gun, and they were off!



We watched for Ray, but with so many people running, we didn't see him until he was already running by us.



During the race we walked all over downtown following the runners hoping to get a glimpse of Ray and to let him know we were rooting for him, but we only saw him once. He didn't see us.

When we came upon the Gatroade station, Emily was amazed by the amount of cups all over the ground. I tried to explain to her that they don't have time to throw the cups away since they are in a race, but she just couldn't get over the clean-up. "Who has to clean up all those cups?"

"Volunteers."

"Uh, does that mean us?"

"No."

With a huge sigh of relief, "Good." ;-)



Another cute conversation occured when Hannah told me that it felt like we were a part of The Amazing Race.

"Oh yeah?" I replied.

"Yeah, I think my dad is amazing because he is running this race." Now, how awesome is that?! (Not going to deny the twinge of jealousy I felt right then...)

We finally made our way to the finish line where we waited for over a half an hour for Ray to come in at 2 hours and nine minutes.







We cheered for him, but he didn't hear or see us. We then made our way to the "pick-up station" where Ray didn't wait for us. We spent the next hour trying to figure out how to reconnect. To make a long story short, he had gone to the car and had to come back to get us since I could not find our way to the car. We we finally saw him, I made him act like he had just finished the race so I could get a picture



And then I snapped a cuter one



Hannah, Emily, and I are proud of Ray for running a strong 13.2 mile half-marathon! Woo Hoo!