A 'blessed' day...

Shew... back from our run after a very LOOONG day, which began at 4am this morning.. We had such a great time! It was a totally different experience than Akron though... let me explain... first of all, when we were going to line up at the starting line with the other 17,000 runners, we meet up with Fr. Hathaway!!! We couldn't believe it. If we had been looking for him, we never would have been able to find him in that crowd. He was running the relay with 3 other priests, getting sponsors to earn money for the pregnancy center. He was running the first 6 mile leg. We ran about the same pace as he did, so we all ran together for the first 5 miles of the race. What a fun and unexpected experience that was! It was so great to see him, and what a treat to get to run with him!! So, we were off to a good start, having Father's blessing before the race began. We thought this was surely to be 'our' race.. we would make our long sought after goal. Father ran off at the 5 mile marker to 'sprint' in to finish his 6 mile leg. Dan and I continued on at our steady 10min/mile pace. We were cruising along, feeling good, loving Baltimore... the harbor, Fort McHenry, the water, the ships, the nice neighborhoods and parks, the poor neighborhoods with all the little kids coming out to give us high 5s...It was going well.
Around mile 16, I noticed that Dan was slowing a bit, and he didn't look like he felt very good. He had gotten a cramp (don't really know what caused it.. too much sugar at one of the stops where he had half a banana and a gatorade..?).. so now he was trying to continue running with a 'knife' jabbing his right side. In the past, we have experienced finishing marathons together and separately, and there was really no comparison... I knew that no matter how long it took us to finish, it would be so worth it to finish together again. So, off we went. I told him to try to walk it out. If he could get rid of it, he could make up the time (or some of it..), but if he continued, it would mean lots of pain. It seemed, though, that every time the pain would subside a little bit, he would try to start back up too soon (that insatiable desire to get ahead..), and then he'd be wincing in pain... so on we trecked. I will admit it was rather enjoyable for me...... Our bodies were trained to go faster, so without the cramp, I felt great (Sorry Dan. I actually did pray for God to let me take on some or all of your pain, but He chose not to...). I really liked the slower pace. So there we went.. we walked some, we ran some. We persevered to the end, slowly but surely. In the end we finished a little over 5 hours. Quite a bit slower than our intended goal, but the feeling at the end was not defeat, but the great satisfaction of having done something so big together. That was worth way more than beating our 'goal' time.
At first, true to character, the 'value' of my run would have been in my ending time. I couldn't understand how our 'blessed' run could be going so awry........ but finally after all the miles were underfoot, I realized that the blessing was in our time together.. and our experience of the run.. not in the 'beating of a goal'. So there you have it. God brought us Father Hathaway this morning to bless us, He gave us healthy bodies to run, He gave us the perfect fall weather, and He gave us eachother. What a blessing this day was...