The Half

The last Saturday in March, Dave and I ran a half marathon with two of his sisters and one brother-in-law. It was scary, exhilarating and hard all wrapped into one. I know that 13 miles doesn't seem like a lot to many people, but it was a really big deal to me. I never thought I was a runner and I have just been steadily building up my miles over the last year. Dave said he wanted to do it several months ago when his sister, Kim, first mentioned it to us, but then he never started training. He kept telling me he would run it anyway and showed up race day without training, at all. In fact, when he was setting up his Nike running app before the race he noticed the last run he logged was December 11th.

The race was in Hemet, California around Diamond Valley Lake. The weather was perfect 50ish degrees and fogged in. The trail wrapped around the curving perimeter of the lake. There weren't many runners so the intimidation factor was low and the beauty factor was high. After messing with my Nike app, iTunes and arm band at the starting line for a few minutes, I started out minutes behind everyone. This turned out to be pretty good for me since I spent the first several miles passing slower runners (including Dave, ha!). I was really happy about that because I didn't want to be shown up by someone who didn't even train for a 5K, much less a half marathon.

By mile seven I was feeling great. The course was an out and back, so it was great to see people passing you on the trail on the way to the finish line. I saw Dave again at about mile eight and was shocked that he was RUNNING and looked great. I loved the run until about mile nine, hurt but kept moving good through mile 11 and then kept running but really hated the last two miles. My feet felt like bricks, but the knowledge of how proud Dave was of me kept me going. About a quarter of a mile before the finish line my brother-in-law, Paul came and ran the last bit with me. It was so great to see him and such a strength. I crossed the finish line slowly, but happily a few minutes later. 2:15 minutes after I started, I finished my first half. Kim got me moving, somehow, to go find Dave. About 15 minutes after I finished I saw him heading toward the finish line. Still RUNNING. I ran the last bit with him and he finished in just over 2:30 minutes. Amazing.

After Dave said when he hit mile five, he heard a voice on his Nike app saying, "Congratulations, you have just recorded your longest run." and thought, "What the heck am I doing?", but he said he really knew at mile three that he could do it. He said he kept thinking of our kids and on again off again running with his sister Karen and it gave him inspiration to keep moving. In the car on the way home, he asked me "So, do you think training would have helped?" I answered in the affirmative but then asked him if he wished he had trained and he said definitely not. We both felt that maybe, just maybe, we would like try a marathon. Keep your fingers crossed for us and hope that we can screw our courage to the sticking place on that one.