I had to repeat this little saying a couple of times in my mind at about 4:30 a.m. on Sunday morning when my alarm went off. No one should ever be awake at that God-forsaken time of day. I slipped on my running gear, put on a few layers of waterproof mascara and lumbered down to our kitchen to sounds of the toaster and coffee maker and excited voices. We were about to do what we had thought was impossible all but 6 months ago: run a Half Marathon.
Over the summer, I had convinced two of my girl friends that they could run jog a Half Marathon with my family, my running club, and I. At first, they were resistant to the idea. "That will never happen," and "Are you crazy?" were just a couple of the phrases thrown around when I brought up the idea. After I brought out the big guns though (AKA: My mom and Youtube montages of Half Marathon Races) they bought in. Thus began our uphill battle of training to endure 13.1 miles.
When you have a pretty serious deadline, somehow the time seems to completely fly by, all while laughing in your face and taunting you: "Are you sure you are ready? The Half is only three months away..." I have to admit, even though I had done this before, (it was two years ago and I was in much better shape) I still had that internal battle of "Can I really get this done?"
Lucky for me, I had an amazing support team. My family was training, my running group was training, and my two girls were training - it was hard to give up with all that hard work going on around me! After logging many miles, race day arrived much sooner than anyone anticipated.
So, at 7:30 a.m., with my favorite running gear on and my two friends, I lined up with 21,000 other runners and anxiously awaited the starting gun.
It was a beautiful run - rock bands every mile or so, pretty little neighborhoods with spectators cheering us on, and some hilarious signs to keep us going. My personal favorite: "This is the WORST parade EVER." So. True.
To summarize the 13.1 miles covered: It was every bit as tough as we thought it would be. But we got it done. It was impossible...until we went and ran it. Crossing the finish line was such a sweet ending to an incredible day - hand in hand, smiles on our faces, and victory in our hearts.
After a lot of hard work - sweat, tears, lost toenails - I think we all got a little bit of running fever. Example: I am already researching future Half Marathons that I can sign up for...? Who am I? It just goes to show - we all thought runners were crazy, and then we started ourselves. It resulted in quite the case of running fever, which, by the way, is totally contagious.
Yeah...My dad and two crazy runners from the running group ran the full marathon...not quite sure I can really fathom that quite yet...
