Run baby run baby run

Mike decided to bail on me and run the 1/2 marathon I wanted to run. I'm both proud and jealous of him. Here are some pictures and his thoughts.

 Starting out strong. My first few miles were faster than my target pace and I was feeling like I might blow my target out of the water. I felt so good I thought I'd give the cameraman a peace sign.

 One of my favorite pics. It almost looks like I'm a runner. My guess is its the orange socks.

Much to my surprise, Makinzee and the kids made a sign and waited for me along the route. I honestly wasn't expecting them at this point but was happy to know that, despite my miscommunication about the race, they were still supporting me. At this point, I was still running strong ahead of my target pace.

 This is now almost at the end, and a lot has happened. Mostly me running out of gas about halfway through. At this point I'm mostly walking and jogging, walking and jogging, just trying to get through and thinking about how much I hate running (trust me, every runner thinks this at some point).

There really is a finish line? It looks so....  green. Glad to be done at this point, and you can tell by the look on my face that I could've used about 15 more weeks of training.

 Notice how all the people are behind me... they realized that it smelled better after I passed for some odd reason.

This is Makinzee now. We reached the finish line just as Mike was approaching. High Fives to the kids!

 and to me it looked like he was having fun!

 I didn't make it from the high five area to the finish line carrying Lilly to get him crossing the finish line.

 BUT we are so proud of him. He did admit he wasn't trained. I quit my training in early Septmeber because he wasn't training--but that is how Mike likes to train. Once or twice maybe three runs a week. Last year I was running 5-6x per week for 6-7 weeks to train. If I had knows he was going to run I would have stuck with my training. BUT live and learn sometimes you just have to do things on your own! Way to go Mike, you almost beat my record without training as much! You're amazing!!

Back to Mike. 

I don't know why, but I like to lay out the shirt, bib & medal after the race is over. It represents a lot more than just some fabric and a chunk of metal, at least to me.

I almost look happy about this, but really I'm anticipating the post-race massage, which was extremely painful but also very helpful.

Maybe next year, Makinzee & I can get our ducks lined up and do this together. We shall see.