I DID IT!!!

 This was the start of my very first 1/2 marathon, 13.1 miles!!!!  As we watched the weather the night before we noticed that they were forecasting rain and up to 50 mph winds.  I was thinking positive and hoping and praying that the weather report was absolutely wrong.  We were in St. George and it hadn't rained since the last time we were there trying to see the play "The Little Mermaid" in an outdoor theatre for Kaylee's B-Day!  As I laid in bed trying to sleep at 5:30 I was awoken by........  you guessed it pouring rain & wind!!! The thought came into my head, "Come what may and Love it!!"  So that's just what we did, we started with rain and ended with pouring rain but we DID IT!!!

 This is just a shot of the finish line that we were hoping to cross in a few hours!

 My friends husband and kids met us at 3 different points along the race, we handed off unwanted gear and they got some fun pictures!! This is about mile 5 1/2 after climbing a hill at least it wasn't raining!

Mile 8 1/2 and feeling great! We had just finished the 8 miles of constant up and down hills, the downhills are always so much easier than the up.  As we could see our destination below from up on the hill it didn't seem like that much farther to go but we obviously didn't get a straight shot across the valley.  At mile 10 1/2 as the wind was hitting us in the face, the rain was pouring down and we were climbing the last hill  I began to wonder if I would be able to keep going.  That's why you run with amazing people that keep you going and going.  All I could do at that point was put one foot in front of the other & keep telling myself I had ran 2 1/2 miles a million times before!!

I put this picture in just so you could see how hard it was raining!

Me taking my last few steps into the finish line! We had just ran along way!!!

 Kim, Me, & DonaMae just after crossing the finish line!! We finished in 2 hours 14 min.  sopping wet from head to toe!  These women are incredible and we kept each other going the entire race, we stuck together and there is no way I could have done it without them! These girls trained with me day in and day out in sometimes temperatures of 10 degrees to keep logging all of the miles that we needed to be adequately trained for this!! Considering that we can all walk today and are not really sore I think our training paid off!

My in-laws were so nice to watch my kids so I could accomplish my goal, they had helped my daughters make these cute hearts filled with candy that had their hand written notes.  As weird as it may sound I was  emotional as I crossed the finish line and saw my girls, nieces, sister-in-law, and in-laws standing in the pouring rain to cheer me on!!! And yes, TJ wouldn't have missed it if he wasn't out of town for work! 

In the end, I asked myself was that worth it? And I can answer with a definitive YES, every step was worth it to work hard at something and accomplish a goal, it's an incredible feeling!!!

 Me and Lindy after the race, she finished about 12 minutes before I did but it was still fun to have her there, maybe one day I'll be able to keep up with her!!