Sunshine and Rain: All it takes is faith, trust and a little bit of Pixie dust

Sunday January 29th was the inaugural Tinker Bell Half Marathon. Almost 12,000 runners, my Mom and I included in that number! This was the first time in a race that I could really tell there was SO many participants!! I have done 3 other ones and 2 of them I believe had more participants but this one was just so crowded the WHOLE way.

So my Mom totally wins in this race, we may have finished at the same time but she was the one that got me through it. After about mile 4 I started to get pretty tired and I was wondering how I was going to keep up with my mom who was feeling pretty good (I could tell because she was passing a lot of people) The plan was to run the first 5 miles and then go to a run/walk combo so I was REALLY looking forward to mile 5... but then we get to mile for and my mom says "well lets just see how we feel at mile 5" meaning "I feel good right now so I think we can go further" and I was thinking ummm well ya right. So mile 5 comes along and I say uh I have to do the run/walk thing because I couldn't take it any longer and as we start moving into this I keep going slower and slower and basically I would slow down and get behind my mom for 3 minutes and then use the last 2 minutes to catch up with her so I could walk. This lasted until mile 7 and then I decided I was going to do 3 and 1 because I couldn't keep running for 5 minutes straight. So I move to that and my mom kind of does it but she kept up her pace and I just tried to keep up until mile 9 and then we got the cliff shot and man that TOTALLY energized me... for about a minute. Mentally though I was feeling more confident as we neared the last 3 miles I was getting excited about finishing but my legs were cramping a little bit so I decided I was going to really take it easy miles 10 and 11 so my last mile would feel okay. It worked out and when my mom started getting tired I was feeling motivated so we encouraged each other at different times and ended up finished in 3:02 which was pretty good I think. Especially since I had to stop to go pee in the middle and we had to run around the people walking the WHOLE time... not just in the beginning. It was madness!!!

So thats how the race went :) First time I actually had a running partner that we stayed with each other and that was good. Its such a good memory and I am so glad I could share it with my mom. She was seriously the reason why I finished in time because I think I would have started walking at mile 5... I know that she inspires the rest of the family too because she has worked so hard and come so far and I did hear her mention possible doing a race for her 60th birthday! Thats incredible! Also, I need to remind her that for the first 5 miles possibly more... she was singing the Disney songs... So I think I might have held her back a bit. Next one I won't though.

Plans for the next race... the Wine and Dine Half Marathon in Florida, November 6-9. I am thinking in the summer that I want to run in 2 10K's to help with training more consistently so if anyone has ideas for races let me know!