the countdown continues...

According to www.cowtownmarathon.org, there are 9 hours, 1 minute, and 48 seconds to go until the Cowtown Marathon/Half-Marathon! From our group there will be 3 of us doing the half and 2 of us doing the full. We are all going out tonight (minus Jenny, a marathoner) with our husbands to carb-load on pasta at Olive Garden, and then home to sleep so we can meet at farggin' 5 o'clock in the A.M to drive to Ft. Worth. Race start time is 7:30. Say a little prayer for us (and our poor legs) tomorrow! See you on the other side!

countdown to cowtown

The Cowtown Half/Full Marathon is this Saturday, and this girl is running the half. This girl (I don't feel too old to use that word) hated P.E. K-12, put off her P.E. credit in high school until her senior year, never did sports or anything remotely athletic (unless you count marching band) in her life, and she is running a half marathon on Saturday. Sounds a bit dotty, doesn't it? Well, I'll know exactly how dotty when I scrape myself over the finish line in 5 days.

I started running with some friends back in April, purely for social reasons. One might say I'm doing this race for the same reasons, since I've acquired pains in places I've never felt pain before - I couldn't be doing it because I enjoy it, could I? Well...there is something to be said for being outside, hot or cold, sunny or foggy (no, we're not the kind that run in the rain), having some "mommy" time. It's a good feeling when you're out there and you pass another runner who gives you a "good morning" or a "hi" as you lope by, and even if you're only on mile 4 of an 8-mile run and you've just begun the ascent of that confounded hill you hit on your loop every dang Saturday, that little greeting can give you enough of a feeling of belonging to a group - the group that gets up early to run - to push through the rest of your run. Or at least the next half-mile, until another one "good-morning"s you.

So we'll see how it goes! Five days to go!