Nearly 17 months after I checked myself into rehab, yesterday, February 12, 2023, I completed my first half marathon in nearly 7 years.

It was last February when, after a long hiatus I began running again. My son paid for me to run a 5K. I wasn’t happy, but it was important to him so I ran it. I hadn’t run in over 5 years and I wasn’t in shape. We ran with my daughter and finished very slowly. As I approached the finish line, my knee that I had surgery on years ago gave out and I collapsed. I got up and finished the race. I’m so thankful that he had me run that race.

Over the past year I ran most days and by the fall was pretty much running 3 miles a day for 4 to 5 days a week.

This November on my birthday my son gave me a card and my present was that he would pay $50 toward my half marathon… What? I can’t run that far. The most I had run in one run to that point was 4 miles. I had just started running again after a month off with covid and other issues. Now 13.1 miles???

I thought I’d give it a try and see if I could get in shape and then found out that the half marathon we normally run (the Mercedes Half Marathon) was ending this year after 21 years. That became my motivation. It was only 3 months until the race and I had to get to 13.1 miles.

I started with what I remembered from my past races years ago. I gradually increased my mileage with a long run and a rest day. I began running 4 miles a day with Sundays off and Mondays as my long day.

It took 3 months, but I finally got up to 12 miles on my long day about 2 weeks ago. It was a good run at a 10:44 pace. For me that was a win. I took the next two weeks a bit easy and then came the big day, 2/12/2023, yesterday.

My son and I both ran and were excited and a bit scared. I had forgotten about hill runs and knew there we several large hills on this course. But I was confident I could finish, hoping to run it in 2 hours and 30 minutes.

I decided to not look at my pace. I just ran to my body and how it felt. Long story short, I finished in 2:06:41 and a 9:41 pace.

It was fun, and I’m glad I ran. At the end of the race my son and I eat a barbecue sandwich and went home excited that we both had a goal and met that goal head on. Good bye Mercedes Half Marathon! It was fun, but now we have to look to a new race (and maybe a marathon)!