26.2, A Mother/Daughter Marathon Journey

One of our bigger projects last year was to film and document Carolyn and Betsy’s journey as they trained for their first ever marathon.  Carolyn felt the peer pressure once her mom signed up for the Mt. Desert Island Marathon in Maine and realized if would be a transcendent experience for them to undertake this journey together, albeit they would be training on opposite sides of the country.

The ladies would check in almost daily on each other’s progress and trade tips, advice, and just commiserate sometimes about the aches, pains, and injuries that would crop up as the weekly mileage kept going up and up.  Carolyn battled hard through a bout of plantar fasciitis during most of her training but with the help of master MSPT Charlie Merrill of Merrill Performance she made it to the starting line where otherwise she might have had to drop out.

The race course would take the ladies through the beautiful roads of Acadia National Park as it wound its ways up and down from Bar Harbor to the finish line in Southwest Harbor.  It would be a very challenging course indeed as it was always either going uphill or downhill with very few “flats.”

Conditions on race day were absolutely miserable since the temps were in the high 30s/low 40s with strong winds and it was raining fairly hard throughout the day; sign up for a marathon in Maine in mid-October and this is the chance you take. You want cooler temps on race day but this was a bit severe.  No matter though, the time had arrived, it was time to toe the line and run, enjoy the movie and follow the journey.