13.1

This time last year my sister & I decided to take on a 10K at Thanksgiving. That would be the farthest I'd ever ran: 6.2 miles. So Thanksgiving morning we laced up our running shoes, layered on the Under Armour & braved the 26 degree weather. It was awesome.....along with 50,000 other runners we finished our 6.2 miles in 1 hour 10 mins. I felt awful for the next 2 days & didn't work out for a month after that. With the push from a girlfriend who was running the Shamrock'n Half Marathon, I found myself, in the beginning of January, signing up for a training group through Fleet Feet in Davis to run a half marathon. I realistically thought I would run the American River Parkway at the end of April, because for a girl who couldn't run 1 mile without stopping, 13.1 miles was quite a feat. Our first group run was 5.5 miles. I put on my hot pink Asics & hit the bike path. 2 miles in I realized I had the worst blisters ever. I either was going to have someone come pick me up or I was going to run the rest barefoot (band-aids & moleskin did nothing.) So I pulled my shoes off, swung them over my shoulders & finished 3.5 miles with a pair of socks. Talk about motivating. The runs got longer by a mile every week, and every week I was more & more proud of myself. I CAN do this. We trained as a group on Tuesday nights too, where we would head to the UCD track & do drills. Memories of high school PE & volleyball flooded me as we ran on the circles under the bright lights. I run intervals...so when I first got into running I started at run 2 minutes, walk 1 minute. By race day, March 13, I was up to run 7 minutes, walk 1. Race day morning came. I met up with my group, we took a million pictures, ate bananas, laughed over how our coaches were going to have to carry us. But we did it. All of us. Besides giving birth, March 13 was the most accomplishing day of my life. Tears welled as I ran onto the baseball field at Raley Field & "Fiona Broward" was announced over the loudspeaker. Both of my boys were there to see me finish.