Hippie Chick Half Marathon

This Saturday, I ran my first half-marathon. I've been training for this day since I signed up for the race on November 1st. Before November, I had not run since my college days (over 20 years!). Training in the middle of winter was a daunting task, but knowing that I had a race to run in May gave me the incentive I needed (that and the fact that I did not want to totally die during the race!).

My sister Susan was my inspiration to give this a try. Despite working full-time and having three children to take care of, she finds the time to run races, and even trained for and ran two marathons!





The race was held at Champoeg State Park, just south of Portland. It is a beautiful park located along the Willamette River. Above is a photo of me with my "support team", Denise and Susan, on the morning of the race. We are all dressed in OSU colors. Go Beavs!

Roger, the third member of my support team.

I couldn't have asked for nicer weather to run a race. It was a beautiful spring day. Roger and Denise stood on the sidelines and held my coat, and took photos. I let Denise use one of my digital SLR's and she had lots of fun snapping photos.

At about the 2-mile mark, Susan jumped in and ran with me the rest of the way. It was nice to have someone to talk to and pace me. It kept my mind off of my body's protests. We had fun mugging for the camera, and doing "the wave" at every mile marker.

The finish line! Yahoo!!
I ran a total of 13.1 miles, farther than I've ever run before in my life. My time was 2:04:00, and I was 170th out of 637 women. I was 21st in my age group, out of 108.


I'm grateful for the support of Roger, who encouraged me to get out there and run on the days that I didn't really feel like it. And thank you to my sis who traveled all the way from South Dakota to be there for the event. We will definitely have to do this again (San Francisco Nike Women's Half Marathon 2010??)