Marathon Man!

When last we spoke, I was in Dublin with my cousin Alex to watch him run in the Dublin Marathon. Since then, I have watched a marathon for the first time, ate at a bunch of new restaurants, spent most of the week with Alex sleeping on my futon, and did a lot of walking around Galway. (Also got internet in my apartment, yay!)

Alex is a fun guest to have, especially in a European city. He majored in architecture and worked as an architect for about ten years, then started working for Minneapolis Parks & Recreation. So the things he is interested in, when it comes to exploring a new place, are the buildings and the parks and the public spaces. This was cool because, first of all, he's easy to entertain, but more importantly because he made me look at things in my city in a different way. As I've lived here for over a year, it's easy to just take things for granted, so having him around was a nice way to remind me how lovely a lot of things here really are.

Watching the marathon was fun, too. I ran Cross Country (and Track, but I hated Track) in High School, but I haven't ever experienced anything quite like it. Alex is part of a nationwide team that raises money for cancer research, so he was there with about thirty people. I watched the race with two of his teammates that weren't running. We took the light rail and cabs to different points of the race, then stood for a couple hours at each point watching all the teammates run by. Alex's goal was to finish in under 6 hours, and he finished in 5:49, so he was quite happy with his time!


Alex (in the purple shirt, with arms raised) at mile 10.



Alex around mile 23


Coming in to the finish! (He whipped his hat off in excitement.)


Crossing the finish line!


Alex and I after the race. I'm so proud of my nouno!

Alex took lots of pictures while he was here, so if I get ahold of those I'll post them up. What a fun time!