The Little Rock Half Marathon

Well, the weekend I had been preparing for has come and gone and I can’t believe it! I ran the Little Rock Half Marathon!

I had such a wonderful weekend. Steve and I drove to Little Rock on Saturday and the craziness started there…

You wouldn’t believe this (or would you?) but I forgot my running shoes! Yup, the entire reason for me being there…left in my apartment back in Memphis. Many tears and hushed discussions later over how to solve this problem, my personal hero and savior came to the rescue: Steve drove back and got my shoes. He’s the best boyfriend in the whole world! [Don’t publicly stone me please, because I am a neurotic packer, checklists and all. I check and double check everything, and I even mentioned that I need to grab my shoes, which were by the door…needless to say, while trying to get all of our stuff and the dogs out the door, my shoes weren’t grabbed, and I didn’t even realize it because I thought the list was taken care of. I would have bought a new pair of shoes, but I have specially fitted insoles for my alignment, so it would have been WAY too expensive and virtually impossible to break them in before the race.]

Jessi and I went to the convention and got our packets. Then we made a giant pasta dinner for 20+ people with five different varieties of sauce!

The race was on Sunday, and I’m proud to say that I ran the entire way without stopping. Needless to say, today my body feels like I got ran over by a truck, because I hadn’t run on pavement since Thanksgiving! But it was such a wonderful experience. The weather was perfectly cool but sunny, and there were thousands of people running and cheering.

We partied it up a bit afterwards with free BBQ, beer, and music, then headed home. It was everything I could have ever hoped for, with a few small snags in the road.

Thank you so much to everyone who supported me through this and sent your kind words to me!

Thank you to Jessi’s family who let us crash there for the weekend. Thank you to Jessi herself for being my partner in crime and always keeping me excited about challenging myself.

And thank you to Steve, for being my biggest fan through all of my races; standing around for hours at the finish line waiting for me and taking pictures. And, of course, for spending an entire day in the car driving back and forth, over a pair of shoes. You’re the best!