The week after our beach trip I ran my first half marathon and the following week Joe ran his first. April was a busy month. I was so proud of both of us. We both started running seriously in September and we trained all winter for our race. (When I mean seriously, I mean I had only run a handful of times my entire 35 years prior to this past September.) I STARTED running and Joe got back into running. He had run in his teens and twenties and now at the beautiful age of 40 has gotten back into running. I am super proud of us.
Lori and I even ran our own half marathon…13.1 miles the week before our race, on vacation at the beach. I wanted to know that I could run 13.1 before the actual race. I guess they say you don’t have to run a full 13 before because on race day, if you can run 11 or 12 you will finish and run 13 if you have to, but I just wanted the assurance that my body could go 13.1 miles!
We were well-prepared and we had so much fun. I run with a group of my friends on preschool days and then try to run 2 other days a week as well. I ran my race with Tracy, Lori C and Lori R and Lori R’s mom. It was fun doing it with friends and celebrating our accomplishment together. We spent the weekend in Raleigh and the kids’ loved staying in the hotel and swimming in the indoor pool and eating pizza with their friends. We did a late night run to Target and got junk food for the hotel room and had the best time. I hope we make it a yearly tradition. It was a weekend I know I will remember for a long time.
Now, don’t ask me my time or my pace. I am the turtle in the race and Joe is the hare. He is super fast. He finished in the top 200 out of 1400 hundred runners in his race. AMAZING! I was 962 in my race of only 1200+ runners. But I finished 3rd among my friends and one friend only beat me by 14 runners. So, we all did an amazing job and were super proud of ourselves. I do hope to run my next marathon around a 10 1/2 minute mile pace. We’ll see how that goes, since I can’t stand running in the summer heat! I haven’t been able to increase my speed because I haven’t been consistent enough this summer. I can barely make myself get out there and run in the heat, much less try to improve my pace. So, we’ll see what next year holds.
It was so much fun and I have to say, something I am super proud of. I am amazed at Joe and his super sonic speed and I am proud of my friends and I for sticking with it, and training even though we are all moms of 2 or 3 kids each and it was super hard to give up our preschool time to get out there and run. I’m sure all of us had 100 other things we would have rather been doing during our 3 hour break on Tuesday and Thursday mornings all year long, but we did it none the less and now we have this to be proud of. Way to go Joe and way to go girls. We did it!
At the beginning of the race. It’s like Where’s Waldo…..Where’s Joe? You can’t miss that gorgeous smile. He’s easy to spot.
Celebrating with his girls! They were so proud of him! To put things into perspective, if Joe and I had run in the same race, he would have finished his 13.1 miles nearly 40 minutes ahead of me! He is a rock star!!! I’m so proud of you babe!
1 comment:
I love catching up with you on the blog! WOW! Ya'll are awesome! I need to start running. I keep thinking if I could make myself start maybe I would like it. ;)
Way to go guys!
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