Re-start

I met my girlfriend over 25 years ago. In all the years since she's never been one to be athletic or stick with any kind of hard exercise regime. She talked about it a lot through the years and tried different things but nothing seemed to stick with her for very long.

That changed last year. My sister knew we would be in the states in December and asked if we wanted to run in the St. Jude half marathon in Memphis. She asked in August of last year. I told my girlfriend that we should do it together. She had never run more than 5km before so she had some serious doubts about her ability to do it but she found a training program on the internet and was willing to give it a shot. The program was for 14 weeks.

Once she started the program my girlfriend turned into someone I had never met before. The training schedule called for running 5 days a week. She only missed one day in 14 weeks. She never looked for an excuse to not run. She ran in cold (25 degrees F). She ran in heat. She ran in rain. She ran in cold and rain. She never quit.

There were many days when the training run was over that all I could do was laugh, give her a high five and ask who she was. I had NEVER seen that side of her before and let me just say, I loved it.

The half marathon was on December 3rd and she nailed it. She didn't stop one time and when she ended she wasn't winded and said she felt like she could have gone faster but she wanted to make sure she had enough gas at the end. I was so proud of her!

I told her, as she trained, that the hard part would be to continue running after the big race day was over. Being in the states with family during the holidays didn't help either. She had a big drop off in running days after race day. Today she began a new running/strengthening schedule.

We went to a nearby track where me, Anderson and Giovanni played with Giovanni's cars from Cars 2 while my girlfriend made her laps. As she passed by on every lap they would go to the track to clap and give her high fives. She cracked off an easy 30 minutes.

Anyway, her re-start today reminded me of a video that Ansley made. I had talked to Ansley before the half marathon about doing a "documentary" of my girlfriend's big day.

She, as always, made a great video. It's full of bloopers and running and other stuff. Two of my favorite parts are the special music she puts on when my dad shows up in his "special" hat. I also like the beginning of the video when my girlfriend, who has some pre-race jitters and doesn't want someone in her face, gets mad at Ansley for always being in her face with the camera.

If you want to catch a brief snippet of my girlfriend's awesome weekend then just watch the video. Great job Ans!