Kansas City Half Marathon!

Or, "How I Came to Need a Knee Transplant"

Or, "Why I Can't Feel My Legs"

Last spring my friend Rebecca asked me to start working out with her (clearly I needed it! December, January, and February are particularly hard on me, as partially evidenced by my last post). We started with some good ol' Jillian Michaels and started running once the weather warmed up to above -9 degrees.  We started small, but I was so surprised how running with a friend makes it ten times more bearable! I had never tried it before. By summer we'd set an illustrious goal to run the Kansas City half marathon, and we started a 14-week training plan. I think we were both kind of kidding when the idea first came up. We joke that we're a good team because she comes up with all the ideas and I am the "yes" woman. If someone else suggests it, I will always say yes. I'm just not very motivated to come up with this kind of stuff on my own.

"Wanna run 6 miles today?"
"YES!"

"Wanna run a half marathon in October?"

"YES!"

"Wanna stay home today and eat ice cream?"

"YES!!!"

It worked well.
 

Today our hard work (and waaaay too many 5 am runs in either the sweltering heat or bitter cold) finally came to fruition, and we ran the KC half marathon!  It was uneventful apart from my sarcastic complaining past mile 11 and our mutual annoyance at the exuberant cheering fans at the same point (turns out it's only fun and encouraging for the first 10 miles or so. After that, I'm like, "Why don't you get out here and say that to my face???" Okay not quite but almost.)
 
We drove to and also started the race with our neighbor Sony, who was running the full marathon, and is truly a force to be reckoned with. She left us in the dust around mile 2. Needless to say, she took 1st place in her age group! By the way, she is 64!
 
 At least I had my cute little cheering squad waiting for me at the finish line!

So anyway, not much else to say. We came. We ran. We finished. We ate fruit and drank Gatorade. We went home and crashed (at least I did!)

Oh, and we ate MINI-BBQ. This is how they do it in KC, I guess. Everything's smaller in Missouri?

Brooklyn was not impressed.