77 Jumps of Joy

Achieving a Goal I've been training for this half marathon for the past 5 months. It's been a wonderful experience, as I've developed wonderful friendships with amazing women and I've learned a lot about myself.

This race was not a race against the clock or against the girls I trained with. Rather, I ran this race against myself and my circumstances. Over the past 9 months, I've realized just how many things are out of my control. I've realize what true faith is and relying on Heavenly Father. I've learned about turning things over to the Savior and utilizing His atonement. I did this race to prove to myself that we can be more than our circumstances. Even when things are going wrong in our lives, we can choose to be happy and choose to look at the glass half-full. I'm grateful for this opportunity. I'm grateful for the support shown to me by my amazing family. So many friends and family called, texted, and emailed me the day before to show their support. Brittany Filetti kept me working out each and every day (Monday through Saturday). Ryan signed up for the half marathon in January to pledge his support for me in this race. My dad flew out here, though he was super tired from working LONG and EARLY hours at work, to support me. Then, he got up at 4:15 on the race day, and stayed with the kids from 6:30 until 10:15 when I finished (They were outside at the park that entire time.). I'm so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends who support me and love me.

I'm so grateful also to have just experienced the race. I started out at a pretty fast pace--about 9:30 (which over a period of 13.1 miles is awesome), but those quickly got slower. I ended up running the race with a 13:40/mile time. It wasn't what I hoped for, but it was still under 3 hours. My times was actually 2:59:04 or 06. The last three miles were the most challenging for me. At that point, I felt famished and really struggled mentally. However, these two seasoned runners stayed with me the rest of the way. One guy, Bob (age 71), was running his 150th or 165th half/full marathon. The other guy, Robert (age 51), was running his 88th race. They talked me through it and allowed me to lean on their strength and experience. It was inspiring to run with them.

I'm grateful I could achieve this goal. It was a really important stepping stone for me.