finishing never felt so good!

Sunday morning, I woke up a few minutes before my 5:30am alarm full of nerves and jittery with disbelief and excitement.   5 months of training accompanied by plenty of blisters, lots of sweat and even more early mornings had lead me to that very moment.   Even though my 10K race was full of unwanted lessons, I had learned enough to know that setting all of my gear out the night before would make a huge difference.   Sleepy-eyed and still a little overwhelmed, I snuggled into my running pants, pulled my hair back and laced up my shoes.   I left my apartment with the realization that my training was over and the event I had been anticipating for so long was about to be in motion.   Yikes! 

I gave my camera to my roommate, who won the award for "best roommate of the year" simply by being willing to support me during my race and take lots of pictures with my camera along the way.   Because I gave Jessica my camera the night before, I don't have any pre-race photos.   She did get some pretty good shots though! 

This was at about mile 3.  I am running next to my friend/running partner Amanda.  We were reading a sign someone was holding up and giggling about an encounter we had just had with a police officer.   You see, it was a VERY hot day and right from the starting line I could tell that 13 miles weren't going to come easily.  After noticing the not-so-happy looking police blocking all of the intersections we ran through, I made it my goal to get as many officers as possible to talk to me along the way.   One officer in particular greeted me with the most seductive "heeeeyyyyy" I have ever heard after I smiled and waved at him.   Amanda and I laughed so hard we almost fell over. 

Mile 9. I started noticing people I knew along the way!  I had just seen my friend Kelli's family and here I am saying hi to my friend Jason who I co-lead a Bible study with at church.   I was really encouraged by the people who showed up to cheer me on!  

Getting closer to the end!  I think this was in between mile 10 and 11.  Amanda decided to race to the end, while I made the decision to finish strong at the pace I had been maintaining.  With less than a 5K to go, I was feeling really great about running further than I had ever run before! 

So tired but completely determined to finish what I set out to do!  

I had 2 goals for this race: 1. run the whole time 2. finish in under 3 hours.  I accomplished both.  I haven't gone online to look at my official time but I finished around 2:50 because it took a couple of minutes for me to cross the start line when the race began due to the hundreds of people in line ahead of me.  

My friend Naomi finished a few minutes after I did.  It was really fun to know that I was running among friends. 

When I started this journey I never expected to come away with a new friend.  I met Amanda on my 7 mile long run and we did every long run together after that.   We ran almost 10 miles of this race side-by-side, talking about life and reminding each other about how far we have come to get to this point.   At one point in the race Amanda said to me, "we are about an hour away from being half-marathoners".   I didn't think it was possible, but I am proud to say that I am a half-marathoner!  

Here I am with my good friend Kelli.   Kelli, can you even believe how much life we have lived together?  5 years of friendship include finishing our undergraduate degrees together, finishing graduate school together AND running a half-marathon together.  I am so thankful that Jesus has allowed us to tackle such large things side-by-side.  You are a huge gift to me!  

The best part of my day was post-race, when I logged onto my University of Minnesota account and saw that I had passed my final graduate class with a solid A (only 1 point off in the entire class!).  I cried I was so relieved to know that I was done and that the Lord had allowed me to exit well.  It was a good day for powerful finishes.  

As more pictures of the day surface, I will be sure to fill you in on some of the profound things I learned about myself and the Lord through this process (both finishing grad school and running a half-marathon).   I am still in the process of obtaining my teaching license and I realized during my race that I will probably feel the same sort of overwhelming gratitude on my first day as a teacher that I did running this race and seeing my final grade.  

It wasn't easy to run this race but I was so thrilled to be doing it because of how hard I had trained.   It won't be easy teaching but I know that I will be thrilled to be doing it because of how hard I have trained.