Half Marathon

Back in November, my friend Tricia invited me to run in the PF Chang's Half Marathon with her and another group of people to help raise awareness and money for a disease called Duchenne (a form of muscular dystrophy), which both of her little sons have been diagnosed with. I was honored to do this - so since I had been at least running a little, I kicked my training into gear for another two months to attempt the 13.2 miles of a half marathon.

So yesterday was d-day..... My good friend Teri also ran - I was so glad to do this with her as we had a good time together yesterday, and she has run a half marathon before - her and her husband Ryan took good care of me throughout the day and I am so grateful for them....

Ryan is a stellar photographer and even got this action shot of me running....

I'm surprised it turned out so clear and it wasn't blurry due to my amazing running speed.... =) Ha ha - totally kidding....

So how did I do? Well, I finished in 1 hour, 53 min., 44 seconds (results) which is an average of 8:41 per mile. When I first started training, I wanted to come in before the two hour mark, so I was glad to achieve that goal and finish well. It WAS a little frustrating as I ended up with a cold this weekend in addition to having trouble keeping my sugar levels up so I didn't feel at my best health-wise and felt like I was running faster and stronger a few weeks ago. But hey, when can you really ever have perfect and ideal circumstances in life? =)

I came home to these from my wonderful husband because he loves me.....

He was such a good Coach for me the past few months - He is very knowledgeable in how to train and a wonderful encouragement and support to me!

This will most likely be the only half-marathon for me - after some hard-core back pain in November, my Doctor/Uncle Keith viewed a past MRI and saw that I have a bulging disc and a few other discs showing damage. He told me that running is just not an ideal sport for this long-term and if I want to be able to have babies and have a quality life when I am older, hopping back on the mountain bike is probably a much better alternative. I have so been so missing my mountain bike and getting a little burnt out on the running so I'm okay with this. Also, running for my friend's charity and watching what her boys deal with on a daily basis just to walk puts it all into perspective....

Thanks for reading everyone - I know this was kind of a long and not necessarily a super entertaining post. Thanks also to so many of you for your phone calls, messages, and texts yesterday as they were a great encouragement and I felt very loved!!!

Oh and one more thing that was sweet about yesterday..... =)