Jon's First Marathon

I remember Jon saying a few years ago that he was going to do a marathon. I'm sure I rolled my eyes and said something to the affect of "whatever". He wasn't consistent about exercising or running, he was overweight and always busy. I knew he was a cross-country runner in high school but that was looong ago. The way he wanted to lose weight was by running because that's what he knew and enjoyed.
There's been many obstacles along his path to this goal, like a stress fracture in his shin, plantar fasciitis (heel pain), too much work to allow running time, etc. Recently he's had a couple serious illnesses the last one being the very end of July where he was hospitalized and had pneumonia. His doctor told him he shouldn't plan on this marathon. Well, Jon is too competitive. He is also a "all or nothing" kind of guy.

He originally planned on doing the "Top of Utah Marathon" in Logan but then heard about Layton doing its first ever marathon. So he signed up months ago (before he was sick) and went through with it on October 9th. He had to wake up around 4 a.m. As a side note: With me having an extemely busy 2 weeks prior to this day I hadn't been able to give him the haircut he so desperately needed. One of the kids had woken me up just before his alarm went off so I wasn't back asleep and decided to give him his haircut then. Wow. I've never given a haircut at that hour or with so little sleep. Luckily I was able to do it quickly and no mistakes. Ok, back to the main story. So he got ready and I dropped him off at 4:50 a.m. where the buses were lined up to take the runners to the Start on Antelope Island. The race was supposed to start at 6:00 a.m. but started about 15 min late. He had guesstimated what time he would finish and I went to the finish area about then. I left all the kids home except for Tanner cuz he was the only one ready and Garrett was still sleeping. So Tanner and I waited and waited and then we could finally spot him coming around the last couple bends.

 Runners wear microchips on their shoelaces to get their exact times and there's a sensor strip on the ground to record their time. This race had two: one at the finish and one right where I was standing taking this pic that showed up on a laptop for a guy to announce runners' names and which kind of race they were doing; Full Marathon, Half Marathon, 10k, or 5k. I thought that was cool. Jon didn't even hear it though, because he still had his music going full strength.

 This is immediately after he got done. He had to hold onto the can for support so he didn't fall. He was too used to running for the past 4 hours and 2 minutes!

He did awesome for his first race. I thought it was going to be last too cause I just thought he wanted to do a marathon once before he died. But to my dismay while having a conversation with someone before we even left there he said something like "next year.....".