Hot Mess: 13x13x13 - 2

It would appear that I haven't written a blog in a while. Oops!

I'm also a week late on this [half] Marathon Monday post. You win some and you lose some, I guess. Speaking of losing... half marathon number two was this month. On February 17th, Sadie and I ran the Austin Half Marathon for the second time. It wasn't pretty, but we did it.

Now, one or both of us may be lectured after I disclose this information, but here it goes anyway. I have some pretty awesome tendonitis in my foot and Sadie had acute bronchitis. Us itises were determined to take Austin by storm. A long, slow, painful storm.

Speedy McFast Laila also joined us for the running fun! She did awesome but would tell you that the hills killed her. That's because they were killer (and at the VERY end of the route). Really, we all did awesome despite our conditions. I'm just glad that Sadie and I finished and there was no urgent care involved (knocking on wood!), which is not uncommon when we get together.

My official time was 2:50:59. Definitely not very close to my goal of 2:30:00 (I will get there one day!) but it's still not my worst time, which happened last April when I ran Angie's Half Crazy Half Marathon. Eventually I'd like to conquer 2:30, then 2:15 and one day maybe I'll be as fast as Sadie and Laila and creep toward the two hour mark, but for now I'm satisfied with not permanently injuring myself.

One of my favorite moments of this race was at the very beginning. I could feel that my foot was already irritated on the walk to the start line, and as the group started to creep forward, I looked at Laila and Sadie and said, "I'm really scared!" A woman in front of us turned around and said, "Who said that? Who's scared?" I raised my hand and smiled at her. "Oh, thank goodness! I'm not the only one." With almost 20,000 runners, I'm sure we weren't the only ones who were scared. And I know for sure there were at least three of us:

Walking to the start - Sadie's clearly psyched!

Here's to getting the hardest run out of the way (please God, let that have been as bad as it gets) and moving onward and upward!