my Long and Winding road . . .

Run a 1/2 Marathon: Check!

(As I was setting up this post I realized that I am of the personality type that I have to post my pictures in chronological order. Weird, whatever.)

I am also of the personality type to get nervous easily. Ha! so you can bet that as I counted down the time to the race the week before up to the day before was crazy for me internally. So I asked all the buddies I knew that were running it to come to dinner with me the night before to "carb load", I really think that I was doing this because I needed anything to take my mind off of everything, ya know!

Here are a few of us that night: Me, Jena & her two cute girls, (McKay, Jena's hubs was taking the picture, but he ran too), Amy & her babe(who actually backed out on us HaHa! ok so she had a chance to fill a spot in another race and couldn't do both, we forgive you I guess ;) and Nickie.
Thanks guys for humoring me!


I am so lucky to have someone to run with me! Nickie and I trained together almost the whole time. This was her 3rd 1/2. My goal was to keep up with her, and I have to say I know she could've left me behind by a few minutes and she wasn't obligated to stay with me but I am glad she did! I needed the motivation!
There were a few ominous looking hills on the course (and they felt ominous as well if you were wondering). And maybe a half mile of running in the uneven dirt which I was not prepared for. But that is just me complaining. Although it was tough and I was tired the time did seem to go by quickly. And the first half was not bad at all. And the weather was fabulous!

I am not the fastest woman on earth and I am not what you would call a "natural runner". But I put in the hard work to train for it and I finished!

And there you see my time. I was not disappointed at all (and actually while I was training I figured that I would probably not run a lot of 1/2 marathons in my life I would probably stick to the 5k-15k range). However, while I was running my disappointment was that I was having trouble finding the strength to quicken my pace. So naturally I am going to have to run another one and beat that time to be satisfied, not sure when that will be since I plan on running shorter races through the summer, maybe this fall (oh man! I just realized that I am thinking of doing this again?)

Some of my family showed up at the finish line to cheer me on thanks guys!

Yay! they were giving free massages at the finish line! And nothing beats baby kisses after running 13 miles! Not to mention having a good looking crew (husband & kids) cheering me on along the way. A high five from my boy at mile 9 was sweet! Thanks so much to Brad for supporting me and being willing to let me go running or working out while he stayed home with the kids! I couldn't have done it without you!

I always tell my friends that I give in to their peer pressure way to much! It is a good thing they've never pressured me to do anything that would actually be bad for me. Thanks to a lot of you who inspired me to do something new!

Thanks again Nickie I really can't imagine having run this without you!