Our first 1/2 Marathon....

We had talked about it for months... we had planned doing it for months... we even registed early... so we *had* to do it! It seemed like the perfect thing - a 1/2 marathon, on a Saturday, at a location not too many hundreds of miles away! We were both up for the challenge. But like all great plans, there was some opposition... mostly Christmas at UPS and the Worst Cold I Have Had in Three Years. Even Thursday I was not sure I would be able to do this without walking most of it. Thankfully Friday I woke up feeling much better, but still coughing up a lung.

We arrived on location - it was cool - but the weather looked promising! It was neat - we ran though farm roads for the whole 13.2 miles. No dodging traffic or having police escorts! After the first 3 miles, I had decided that a miracle was happening - I hadn't coughed once - I'm not sure why - but I'll take miracles in any form I can get them! I quit worrying about coughing and started enjoying the run. The race was in honor of a little girl who had died of cancer, and throughout the race there were pictures of her and other kids hanging up that said things like "Cancer is hard - running is easy!" - I really liked their motivating signs. I will say the last couple of miles were a little rough. By then both Rik and I were running together - and it was fun to finish together. We turned the corner and saw the finish line and he started moving faster. He put out his hand and pulled me along so we could finish together - and even did one better and pushed me ahead. He really didn't have to do that - I knew I married him for a reason though! :) We didn't quite make our goal times of under 2 hours, but we were close - 2:01:37 and 2:01:38. Just remember Rik really deserves a bit better since he was pulling me along that last few yards. Statistically we were in the top 1/3 of people who entered. And, we quit running and were walking around cooling down and I began coughing again. In fact, I coughed quite a bit the rest of the day.

It was a fun day - and I'm not even that sore today! Insanely, I would even consider doing it agian next year!