Tobacco Road 2011

Bob is a Marathon Man! After his Rock and Roll Arizona debut, he just got the itch and decided he needed to do another one. Down here in North Carolina we have awesome trail systems as well as the American Tobacco Trail. The Trail is an old train track that has been converted to a running trail. It is crushed gravel and wonderful to run on! When we discovered that they have a Marathon and Half Marathon scheduled Bob was signed up in a hurry. March 20th was a bit too soon for me to plan on running the half so I decided to be his transport and cheering section (Lily too).

On race day we were up at 5:30 and Lily was a little bit confused.


She had this zombie look on her face and as soon as she was buckled in the car she was fast asleep. Bob was all nerves but was such a good sport when it came to me and the camera.


We dropped him off at the starting line and got to hang out with him until he had to enter the shoot for the start.



Bob was getting more and more anxious as the time approached. His goal was to finish the race in 4:00 hours and he knew that he was going to have to run 26.2 miles at a 9 minute pace. In Arizona a year and a half ago his time was 4:36 so he was going to try to shave nearly 40 minutes off of his time. Lofty Goal, but GO BOB!

The gun went off and the pack went with it!


Lily, Rocky and I did our best to see him in the middle of the race, but it was so difficult to get the timing right. We missed him at mile 16, but decided that was okay as long as we got to see him cross the finish line. We arrived at the finish line 45 minutes before we saw his blue shirt on the horizon.

Liily and I were so anxious to see him and there he was.....still running! While we were watching him I kept on thinking of Dori in "Finding Nemo," "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming." Here he is right before the finish line.


He was so focused that he didn't even see us! And there he goes to the finish line! Way to go Bob!


He did so great and he not only made his goal, he beat it by 9 minutes! Bob proudly crossed that beautiful finish line at 3 hours and 51 minutes. He felt great and finished strong!




This marathon thing has gotten in his blood. Even 15 minutes after he crossed the finish line, he was ready to talk about the next marathon on the books. Disney World 2012, here we come!