Grand Rapids Marathon 2009

Cheri & I after the race

The morning of the marathon, I woke early.  I drank some coffee and continued deliberating in my mind what pace team I was going to try to stick with.  The pace teams are separated by celebrities marathon race times.  If you’re only doing the half marathon, you can divide it in half to see your ending time.  I was stuck between Will Ferrel’s time and P. Diddy. 

Little Earthquakes

I had planned on writing about the marathon today.  The kids & I have been enduring the ’sickness’ that is flying through the schools and I just didn’t have it in me to emote the events of the race until I felt a little better.  I’ll have to save it for a nearby date though.  A black cloud moved into my life last night and I feel like I need to get it out before I can move on.

I found out last night

Honest sweat

Since July, I’ve been training again for my half marathon in October.  I gave myself 3 more weeks of training this year to make it a solid 13weeks.  My friends, Cheri & Megan, agreed to do the race together just like we had last year.  After consulting our schedules, we decided we’d have to train separately during the week and do our long runs together on the weekends.

In the beginning, it wasn’t so bad.  I learned the joy of running by myself.  Quiet time to think and release the tension of the day.  Smelling the

Call me the breeze

The core of me is filled with fear… well, correct that… it used to be filled with fear.  It seems like my whole life, I’ve battled with being afraid of things.  Some are rational fears (like heights) and some have been ridiculous fears(lawn mowers).  I’ve tried to work on both the big and little ones over time.  They say the best way to overcome a fear is to just do it.  I can officially add riding a motorcycle to the list of fears overcome.  Here’s some pictures of

Vous ja de

Almost 12 years ago, I had to attend

The Bridge Run aka Cheri & Chris Rock

Map course

While training for the half marathon, I stumbled across the Bridge Run (10mile race).  It fit right in line with our training schedule so my friend Cheri & I decided to give it a go.  Technically, we were supposed to run 11 miles this Saturday with our schedule but we figured that the added bonus of getting a race under our belts would offset that 1 mile difference. 

The night before the race, I was really  nervous.  It surprised me just how nervous I was!  My belly was full of butterflies and I was stressing out a little.  I tried to drink a lot of fluids that night to make sure I was hydrated and eat a very simple, easy on the tummy dinner.  From what I had read online “there is no such thing as constipation for a runner on race day” and I was not going to take any risks.  Yikes!

I woke up Saturday morning