The Road to a Half-Marathon...

Well, I thought my long-distance days were over... but alas! My friend Heather asked me to train with her and as a much needed distraction to Russ leaving, I agreed! UGH! Now the farthest I have run was the Army Ten Miler... which I ended up doing with an injured foot and vowed to never run one again after that... but time apparently changes things. SO! Here you go! The first 10 miles I was such the Rock Star!!!! Mile 11 hit and it became apparent how 'MENTAL' running is! The mile markers of the run were way off, so our GPS watches were saying one thing and the physical mile markers were saying something else. Ouch... also, there was a turn-around at one point during the race so we were thinking it was at one place and it ended up being fairly farther along than we thought... that leads to another big mental block. AND THERE WERE NO T-SHIRTS "proving" that we ran a Half Marathon. That in and of itself is a huge motivational thing believe it or not. So the last 3 miles were pretty tough.

I ran it slowly, but we didn't stop the entire time and I can now say I have run a Half Marathon (13.1 miles) ahem... it was actually 13.5 and all the hoopla at the end had packed up and left by the time we finished... but you know what? WHO CARES!!!!! :-)

My running buddy Heather...

This was the beginning of the race... yes, we kept our sense of humor about being at the very tail end the entire time! The Red Cross guys were right behind us most of the time...
Heather's husband had our kids and drove around to different parts of the course so we were able to have our little cheerleaders meet us just when we needed a boost!
Mile 11... at one point, when the kids saw us they were yelling "hey mom, you are in first place!!!!" why? because to their eyes we were in first because they say no one in front of us... of course that was because we were so far behind everyone else... but hey... again, WHO CARES!
We made it!!!!
My own little cheerleaders! They were so supportive and awesome!!!

I can definitely say I have done it though... it took my knees a few days to recover, but recover they did. Not sure if I will do another, but I am glad I did it!