Icing my Knees, but thankful for the experience!

I spent yesterday afternoon icing my knees. Why? No, not because I'm getting old! haha, I'm younger than most of you! hehe I actually turn 28 in just a few weeks. . go ahead and mark your calendars for Feb 2! =)

The real reason I was icing my knees is because (drumroll please)

I RAN THE DISNEY HALF MARATHON!!!!!
** please note that all pics were taken with my iPhone while running! That's why they are so blurry!

It was a blast! Let me back up about a bit. . .
**Here is a picture of us at 5 am waiting for the start.. .

Remember in middle school when you had to run a mile for PE? I didn't do it. I actually had never run a continuous mile until a year ago!

I started working out at a gym last year and tried to "take up" running. I would walk, then walk fast, jog, run, sprint, go back to walking. So, even then while I was finishing 3 miles. . .I never ran more than 3 minutes straight!

Then. . . .My heart was stolen. For orphans. I realized after coming back from Liberia that my $30 a month that I was spending on my gym could be better utilized elsewhere! So, I figured the ONLY free and safe activity for me if I wanted to lose my adoption (stress) weight was running. I HATE running! I thought I would never be able to breathe!!!

So, I began running in my house. I started by running 5 minutes at a time. . .from my front to my back door. . .with the kids chasing me! I swear, I should have put it on youtube! Then, every time I ran, I would increase it by 5 minutes. Soon, I realized I was running a full hour and accomplishing 5 miles! I called my friends to see if I could join them for their long distance runs. Soon, we were running 10 miles on a Saturday. Then, as you know, I broke my foot and had to stop for a while. . just getting back to it last month or so.

Yesterday was the culmination of it all. I got to run 13.1 miles
**the picture is at the 13th mile. Man, how I looked ahead for those signs!

with my sweet friends, Christie and Abby. They both have run half marathons before and have been running for MANY years, so they sweetly stayed behind with me.

Truthfully, we thought it was going to be a bit boring. . .I mean, we had to leave the house at 4:15 to run just 3 miles more than we normally do. . and it ended so early that there was no way our kids and hubbies could be down there to cheer us on. I was wrong! It was so much fun.

Because I registered before I even started running, I figured my time as pretty darn slow. This put us in the VERY LAST wave of people crossing the start line. We were in the BACK OF THE PACK for sure. We crossed the start line about 30 minutes after the shotgun start. It was SUPER packed. 46,000 runners between the half and full marathons! It was wall to wall people. This meant that even our running, was sometimes pretty slow as we had to weave in and around people.

But, we KEPT running. Even now, when we do our long runs we walk at every mile for just a minute. Granted. . we run a lot faster on Saturday mornings! (Remember that Abby! I'm so afraid that she's never going to let me walk again!) There were marching bands, deejays, Disney characters and spectators cheering us along. That made it so fun!

Once we got to 3 miles, I realized. . Hey, we haven't walked yet! I feel great, let's wait until 5miles to walk! Then, we got to 5 and I felt fine. . .so I said, 'let's wait for the halfway point!". Then, we got to halfway and I felt ok. . .so we wanted to wait till 9 miles where they were supposed to be giving cliff bars. They weren't actually cliff bars so we didn't want to stop. . that meant, 'what the heck, let's run the whole way!". This felt like a great idea until miles 9-12 when I REALLY wanted to stop! I actually started to walk, but my legs felt funny even walking. . so I went back to running again. We ran (at different speeds!) the WHOLE time!

That was a huge accomplishment for me. I have never run more than 10 miles and I certainly have never RUN more than 5 miles without walking!


It was a blast. Our favorite part was running through Magic Kingdom.
**here are Christie (in the white) and Abby (in the blue) with the castle in the background.

That was really fun with characters along the way. All along the way, we would pick people that we wanted to pass. A few times I saw this girl with lady bug wings (a lot of people dress up in silly costumes for this one). I said to Abby, "I just want to beat her"! (no real reason why). Well, about 200 yards from the finish line, we see her. . .ahead of us! Abby yells to me, "there's the lady bug. RUN" We sprinted the last 200 yards as fast as we could over the finish line! And, we beat the lady bug. But, in her defense, she didn't know she was really racing us!

Thanks girls for a great day! I know neither of you are sore. . but I'm dying here! My knees had to be iced most of the day yesterday and today I just feel sore all over. Wearing heels to church today was NOT my smartest move! haha They say that the 2nd day is worse so I'm imagining that I'll be a great mom tomorrow!
**This is us, right after crossing the finish line! Still looking good after running 13 miles!

I know you'll ask what our time is.. but, come on! That doesn't matter! Ok, I was proud of our time but I know it's slower than Abby and Christie's other times! Our time was 2 hours and 39 minutes. I was 600 out of 1200 in my age level. Basically, though. . .we started at the back of the pack and ended in the middle. I'm super pleased with that! Truthfully, I like running because A) It's free, B) I get to be with my friends! (I've even figured out how to talk on the phone while running on my own during the week!), C) I feel like I can eat whatever I want that day! I'm all about the experience and didn't really care how we did. So, I'm super thankful for how it turned out and proud of us girls!

**Here we are getting our medals at the end. My kids are pretty excited that I got a medal for running and it has Donald Duck on it!