One week ago it was Mother's Day. I have to share how I spent my Mother's Day since it was such a wonderful day!
The Saturday before Mother's Day, Dave and I traveled over to Bigfork, Montana to spend the weekend with my Grandpa and Grandma Wight. They have a house right on the north shore of Flathead Lake. I always love visiting there because it reminds me of the summer many years ago when Dave and I sort-of got engaged. We were sitting along the lake shore, talking about where we would each be heading off to college in the fall, and David turned to me and said, while holding my left hand in his, "Will you save this finger for me?" I said sure and that was it. No "Will you marry me?" was ever said, but we both figured Dave's question was as good as "Will you marry me?".
Anyway, I digress. The purpose of last weekend's visit was not to relive memories from a quarter-of-a-century ago; the purpose of the visit was to spend time with Grandpa and Grandma as well as have a nice place to sleep the night before Dave's Spartan Race.
Sometime back in January, NBCSports ran a Spartan Race marathon on TV. Dave and Carson watched every episode and were hooked! They started looking for races to compete in and when they found the one in Bigfork, they signed up. The training went great. They invited me to participate but I politely declined. I'll stick with running, biking and occasional weight-lifting.
About 2 weeks before the race, Carson discovered that he wouldn't be able to participate. Finals at college and one last hurrah with college friends took precedence. Who could really blame him? I entertained the notion of taking Carson's spot for about 2 days, but when I discovered that monkey bars and jumping over low walls was a lot harder than I remembered, I told Dave that I would go and be his support crew instead. Dave has been such a huge supporter of me on all of my race adventures I didn't feel like I could really say to him, "Sorry, it's Mother's Day. I'm not going."
Being there watching him compete was one of the best Mother's Day presents I have ever received. I told him to have fun and don't get hurt. He went in with the mindset that wasn't going to do any penalty burpees. It was amazing to watch his grit and determination in order to fulfill his goal of no penalty burpees. The only burpees he did that day were the 5 burpees that were part of the atlas carry obstacle. He is such an intense competitor! And because of that he wound up finishing 1st in his age group for the morning racers (we later learned that there was an afternoon racer who had a faster time, but only by less than a minute).
Of course, pictures are necessary to complete this blog post....
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| Waiting with the masses |
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| Over the wall...that's not how the pro's do it |
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| 400 yards of barbed wire crawl (or should I say roll?) Holy dizziness! |
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| Bucket brigade |
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| Last obstacle! |
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| Finishing time! |
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| Proud Spartan...aroo,aroo,aroo! |
Not sure when the next Spartan race will be, but Dave and Carson have already been talking about it. And this time, Dave intends to sign up in the "competitive" division, not the open class. His amazing results at Bigfork might have created a monster. Love this guy!
