We Did It

I said I wouldn't talk about it much on here, and boy howdy, I never mentioned it again! But the half-marathon was this past Sunday. JuJu came down to run/walk with me, what an IDIOT! Just kiddin', Ju's. I have trained 2-3 times per week since the first week of June. The longest distance I'd gone before the race was 10 miles (half-marathon is 13.1) and I had really slacked off the last couple of weeks.


It was HARD, but I am glad I did it. I really wanted to quit around mile 12 and what a loser I would have felt like then! When I told JuJu not to let me quit, she thought I was kidding. I really wasn't. Parts of it were really fun. There were over 300 volunteers, which included people passing out water, Gatorade and orange slices all along the route, people cleaning up the trash, cheering us on, and blocking traffic. There were all kinds of musicians along the route to motivate us. We got to run through our local semi-famous baseball field. They announced our names over a loudspeaker as we crossed the finish line. We got medals. Those were the good parts.


I felt like we were doing pretty well the first several miles. Then about mile 9 I started to feel the burn and not in a good way. After mile 10 I couldn't really run anymore and we walked the rest of the way until we were close to the finish line, so we could finish strong. This was really emotional for me and I was a little surprised to find myself crying at the finish line. I was proud of myself and SO RELIEVED to be finished! I think the only thing I said was "Where's the car?"


My goals were to finish the race on my feet, run at least part of the way, and not finish last. I accomplished all three of those goals. I finished 1399 out of 1447 (100th in my age group).


Congrats to our friend Jeff who finished 130th overall and 19th in his age group!

Special thanks to my great bud iMollie who brought the kids out by herself and even made a sign to cheer us on. When I saw that cute little blondie in his boots, I knew it was them.

Thanks, JuJu for crawling along with me (not literally, thank God) and for all of your support, on Sunday and always. Sorry we didn't get a picture of the two of us with our medals. We'll have to remember that next time.