I Did a Half Marathon!

Less than three hours ago, I made personal history. I actually completed a HALF marathon! Wow, what a rush.

And just to clarify, the time on the clock isn't correct because there were so many people in the race that we crossed the start line a good while after the clock started.

My team has been training since February. At some points, there were up to six members. Then we lost some and gained one, and four of us finished the race today. I'm so proud of us for finishing. We weren't the fastest (of course), but we weren't the slowest. And regardless of the speed, the fact is that we FINISHED. That's pretty amazing for us, considering some of us used to think a 5K was long.

I love that the race hands out medals to every single person who finishes. I don't know that I've ever won a medal before, so I will cherish this one. Silly to know that a medal can be so meaningful! And our coach, Joe, got two medals because he completed a different race a while back, and people who complete both races get a special second medal too. He's quite the coach and he's even competing in an Ironman in just six days (the Redman down in Oklahoma City). What a champ!

I also love that our bib numbers have our names on them. You have no idea how encouraging it is to hear someone say your name when you're in a slump.

And, yes, our shirts say, "Does this shirt make my butt look fast?" The best part is the saying is on both the front and the back (right across our fannies) and we had so many people who cheered us on just because of our shirts. We ordered them from One More Mile Running.

To thank our coach for all his hard work, we gave him a shirt with a quote from John Bingham on it. It says, "The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start." Amen!

I am off to elevate my poor aching feet and sit around for a while. And then I'm going to get up and move around a bit so my muscles don't totally seize up. I feel pretty good after finishing, if I could just dull the ache in my feet!