Philadelphia Marathon

On Sunday November 21st Alan ran his first marathon. He has been training for it for months and the day finally came! Alan's parents came down to see him run his race. We left at %am to get down to Philly.

There is Alan all pumped and ready to go at 4:30am. We put his bib number on and all. I love that they actually put his name on his bib. This was really nice because when the racers were running you could cheer them on by calling out their name!

Getting ready for the race to start.

They had all these UPS trucks set up for the runners to store their things in while they ran. I thought this was pretty neat!

They grey corral. They grouped runners by what they thought their finish time would be. Alan was in the grey. He estimated he would finish at around 4 hours.

In the corral getting in the zone and waiting for the race to begin.

Where's Alan?

The sheer number of runners was phenomenal. Their were people running the marathon (26.2 miles) and people running a half marathon (13.1). There were about 20,000 runners. That is a lot of people!

Alan at the halfway point at about 14 miles. Going strong!

I found Waldo! A lot of people dress in funny costumes and such to run. There was a guy who labeled himself as Sexy Beast. There was a batgirl and some people in tutu's. The craziest person I saw was a guy wearing a cape and running in sandals. You have got to be out of your mind to run 26.2 miles in sandals!

Almost there! Here he is right near the finish line. Go Alan Go!

He did it!

Alan did awesome! He reached his goal of a little under 4 hours. His watch read that he did the race in 3 hours 55 minutes. The official time that came through was 3 hours and 57 minutes. Great job! He came in 3,769th place out of 10,256 racers. I have never been more proud of him!