Will run for beer, cheese and brats...

...and no truer words have ever been said for my husband. Doc wore his heart stomach on his chest for this year's Jungfrau Marathon back in September where he finished in the top third of all of the men with a time under 5 hours. This was his fourth marathon with having already run Chicago, Paris and Wisconsin (can you guess which expo he bought the cheese/brats/beer tech shirt at?), but this was a marathon unlike any other. For instance, when trying to determine if you should sign up for this race, with its 6 hour and 30 minute time limit (they pull you out and you don't get a finisher shirt if you go beyond that), you're supposed to add 1 hour and 30 minutes to your average "normal" marathon time. Crazy, right?

Luckily Doc is just that kind of crazy.

So we went, with two other groups of crazy friends, who also ran this merde bat crazy 26.2 mile race up the freaking Schweiz Alpes (including a fourth friend who bought a bib the night before - me = surrounded by crazy, but the very best kind)...

...because what else are you going to do on a warm September weekend?

We started off in Interlaken for the expo, and then took the cogwheel train up to Wengen for the night. Wengen is a UNESCO protected site, so only electric cars (and not many of them) are allowed in the city.

 

We had an amazing place to stay with a valley below us full of cows and sheep.

The following morning, our racers headed out at the butt crack of dawn to get down to Interlaken for the start of the race. Our plan was to meet them at the halfway point at Wengen, and then take the cogwheel train all the way up to Jungfraujoch for the finish...

We had our American flag out to cheer on our racers in Wengen...

Here comes Doc at the halfway point! I was expecting a kiss or something like that as he ran by, but instead I got two train tickets shoved in my hand. Once I realized how expensive it would have been to get to the finish at Jungfraujoch without them, I was totally fine with that.

We pushed and shoved our way onto the cogwheel train, and its good thing that we did, because otherwise we would have missed our runners at the finish...

Above Wengen...

Despite all the pushing and shoving it took to get on the cogwheel train we made it to Jungfraujoch before our runners...

Planted our American flag...

(USA! USA! USA!)

And waited for our runners to cross the finish line.

Next up: Will run for beer, cheese and brats...CONT'D!

A la prochaine friends...

 

Honey