Marathon Day and Engage-versary!

Today is Marathon Day in Boston (shout out to Kristy! Next year my friend, we watch it together!). Last year on Marathon Day, I got engaged and it was amazing. Even though tomorrow is officially our "engage-a-versary," today feels like it more due to the race. So here's a re-port of last year's marathon day and how Ryan and I managed to get engaged.

Originally posted May 12, 2009.

I love the way that Ryan proposed! I couldn't have asked for anything better, it was perfect.

We went to Boston April 17th-April 21st. Ryan ran the marathon on Monday, April 20th, 2009. That's him the red shorts and black singlet, black arm warmers.

Ryan ran an absolutely amazing race. He placed 158 overall, out of about 25,000 runners. He PR'd at 2:38:46, about 6 minute miles. He is really hard on himself, and even he was thrilled with his time. Everyone was ecstatic about his race (everyone being me, his parents, his best friend, and his best friends wife).

After the race, we went to the Sam Adam's brewery. It's actually their research and development facility, where they test all of their new beers.



After the brewery tour and tasting (yay!), we headed to Hopkinton, MA, where the start line to the marathon is. Ryan wanted to get some pictures here, and I wanted to see it anyway, being a running nerd myself. Someday, if I get good enough, I will be crossing this myself. I would love to run Boston.


We took lots of pictures, and Ryan said that he wanted a picture of a certain street sign. I thought it was kind of odd--it was a pretty non-descript street sign. So across the street we went to take the picture. I took it, and Ryan started hugging me and saying these really nice, sweet, things. It didn't strike me as odd until he kept saying these wonderful things, and before I knew it, he was down on one knee! How he got down on one knee after racing 26.2 miles, I don't know, but he did it. (He did say it hurt, though!) Of course I said yes, and his parents, best friend, and best friend's wife (who were all across the street documenting this for us) starting cheering. I was teary, and Ryan started hugging me again--I was very close to falling over, so this was a good thing. We hugged for a long time. Then Ryan holds the ring up and says "Would you like to put this on now?" It was everything I wanted the proposal to be, times 1000.


That's us right after he asked me, when we had both calmed down enough to pose for a picture. I love the grin on his face...getting him to smile like this in pictures is impossible.

So we've been engaged for 364 days now...and I am so, so ready to get married! How long is too long for an engagment? It's been nice in terms of planning and mental prep, but dang...I'm ready. What do you think about how long engagements should be? Any marathoners out there who ran Boston this year?