Last year at the Women’s Half Marathon in Minnesota, I saw
sisters cross the finish line holding hands.
I’m certain that I teared up in that moment and immediately texted my
sister and asked her to run a half with me.
I knew it was something on her bucket it list to do someday. She replied with something close to
“sure”. I’m almost positive she thought
I would forget or let it go.
I started looking for races for us to register for. Sarah hates to run in the cold so I knew it
would have to be a late spring or early summer race. I bribed her with a race in California. And made a case for it to be both a race and
a long weekend they could see my brother in law’s family. Really, how could she say no to race in San
Diego?
We started training in March. My sister and I have always been close. She’s one of my favorite people to spend time
with. I really enjoyed all of our extra
time together as we ran together on average twice a week. Maybe it’s the big sister in me, but I also
loved sharing my knowledge of running with her.
She trusted what I told and pretty much followed the plan I put
together.
I knew she wouldn’t have any trouble after our longest run
of 12 miles. She hardly complained and I
was the one slowing us down. I think
there’s a sweet spot between well trained and over trained and I think she was
in the perfect place. I’m not sure she
really got excited for the race until a few days before. But the more excited she got, the more
excited I got.
Sarah’s sister in law, Kim, was going to run the race with
us. She has children near the boys age
and they all bonded during Sarah and Jeff’s wedding last spring. It was great for us to all be together for a
few days in San Diego.
On race morning, we left super early to take the shuttle to
the race start. Imagine for a moment the
most annoying people you can think of to ride in a shuttle with, and the group
of women in our shuttle was worse. They
actually asked us to get out of the shuttle and onto a different one – we
politely declined. They were loud and
obnoxious. Sarah leaned over to me at
one point and whispered that no matter how hard the race would be at least we
wouldn’t be stuck with them.
We had lots of time before the race to sit around and
prepare for the race. I’m not sure this
was a good thing as it’s easy to overthink before a race. One of my favorite things about this race was
that it benefitted the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. There was a lot of Team in Training
runners. It was a great distraction and
made me super proud to be a part of such a great organization. In the last mile of the race, I saw a lady
holding a sign that said, “Thank you from a Leukemia Survivor”. Talk about powerful, and yes I might have had
tears in my eyes.
We started in the corral behind the 2:30 pacer. I was expecting us to finish with a time
around 2:45. Kim had missed some
training and planned to run with us as long as possible. Part of my running wisdom I had shared with
Sarah was to start slow and then to slow down.
If you’ve ever run with me feel free to laugh here. We walked more in the beginning than we did
later in the race. This was to warm up
well and to finish stronger…oh and because the first 3 miles always suck. We lost Kim somewhere around mile 4, probably
because that’s also where I finally feel warmed up (sorry Kim).
Experiencing the race with my sister was like experiencing
it for the first time all over again. It
was wonderful and a little magical. San
Diego was my 30th half marathon.
As you can imagine, I’ve seen almost every sign you can think of. But I read them all again and laughed with
Sarah. I’ve often said how important
spectators are during a race. Until
you’ve run a race, you really don’t understand how much holding a funny sign
can help the runner going by. I also
really enjoy spectators who give out goodies during the race. My favorite this race was a popice
popsicle. I made my sister dash from one
side of the road to the other to get one.
There was a guy in front of us the last 8 miles or so with a
3:00 pace bib on. Sarah kept saying she
really wanted to run it in under 3 hours.
I purposely didn’t wear a watch or pay much attention to the timing
clocks. I didn’t want to add any extra
pressure. I was also aware of who was
around us, and I knew the 2:45 pacer never passed us. So every time she said she wanted to finish
under 3, I just smiled and said we would.
We finished in 2:34.
I’m so proud of Sarah! It took me
a long time to get to a finish that fast.
Waiting at the finish line, were our husbands (with signs, sweet guys)
and other family and a few friends. Sarah
held it together through the entire race and through the finish. As we were walking back to meet everyone
else, she gave me a huge hug and said thank you and she had big tears in her
eyes. It was one of the moments you know
immediately is so special you will cherish it forever. We barely missed Kim finishing. She finished in 2:51 – quite impressive since
she didn’t get to get to train as much as she wanted.
At the race expo, Sarah and I registered for the Women’s
half in Nashville. It is my personal
running philosophy that you should sign up for your second race before you run
your first. And there was a moment
during the race where Sarah must have been on a runner’s high where she said
maybe (You should know I take maybe as yes.) she would do one travel race a
year with me. I never had any doubt that my sister would finish the race. I was in a little surprised by how gracefully
she did it. I never heard her complain a
single time. We smiled, we laughed and
we had a great time. I couldn’t help but
think we captured the spirit of the race perfectly.
