13.1 miles!

One of the awesome things about my husband: he is a dedicated runner. He has done a couple marathons, a triathlon, and multiple half marathons. He loves to run. I sometimes wonder if he actually studied running technique, the right shoes, training, injury, and other "running topics." When we got married, one of his dreams was to run a marathon with his wife. My reaction to hearing that dream was, "What?? Me??" and then I laughed to think I would be able to run any race for that matter.

It was only a couple months after the wedding day that we started to run a couple times a week together. From the beginning, I was pretty intimidated by his running. But he always let me determine the pace. Not only did Bryce love every minute of it, but I soon began to really appreciate running. Once I started running more, I began to realize that I felt really good and enjoyed exercising more often. By the Spring, we decided to run a half marathon together! Due to schedule, moving, and other factors, we waited a few months to run our half marathon until December 12, 2009. We ran the "Thunder Road" half marathon in Charlotte, NC.


The morning of the race, it was in the 20s and 30s, but once we started running, we got pretty warm. It is a smaller race compared to some half marathons. There were 3,002 runners in the half marathon. Most of the race was through beautiful older neighborhoods. Along the way, there were a few DJs playing music and at the end, a couple live bands.

Bryce kept me laughing the whole way. He ran ahead of me and took pictures of me running, videotaped me, and kept encouraging me up until I crossed the finish line. I loved it! I think it was especially fun to set the goal for myself, train for a few months (with a great trainer!), and finally accomplish the goal together.
We've already started looking for other races we're interested in running. We're hoping to run one later this Spring.

Will I run a full marathon? Right now, my answer is "no." Then again, if I had been asked to run a HALF marathon two years ago, my answer would have been "no."