Kim and Darrell: 13.1 Miles!

I was so excited when Darrell agreed to run a half marathon with me. He is such a good sport and I didn't even have to work that hard to talk him into it. We had a lot of fun spending time together training for the race and it was good motivation for us to stay in shape.

We had some set backs along the way that interrupted the training, but I am glad that we were able to run the race together. I had some irregular heart palpitations and lots of tests on my heart that kept me from running for about three weeks at the peak of our training. Thankfully, everything is okay!

On our last long run before the actual race, my foot started to really bother me. I tried to shrug it off because it would start to feel better, but when I went on a short run and it was still really painful, I decided I should probably get it checked out. I went to the podiatrist two days before the race and found out that I have tendonitis. In about a week and a half, I will get inserts for my running shoes. He gave me some good advice to make the race less painful and I spent the next two days constantly icing my foot. It didn't bother me at all during the first half of the race, but the second half was a different story. I was very happy when the race was over so I could sit down and take some pain medication!

We ran the race in 2 hours and 12 minutes, or a 10:08 pace. We were pretty happy with our time (especially since it was Darrell's first race ever & our goal was to not worry about time and just finish strong). And even though people may think I am forcing Darrell into running races, he told me that "This is fun!" and that he enjoyed the race atmosphere.

We celebrated being finished by eating Red Robin and Dairy Queen and signing up for another half marathon! We'll run the Akron Half Marathon in September. This summer we are going to try to keep up our endurance and improve on our speed so we can break two hours.

Well, I guess maybe I spoke too soon when I said Darrell enjoyed the run