I completed the Pittsburgh Half Marathon today. What a rush! As some of you know, I didn't find out that I was eligible to register (darn wait list) until April 20th, which only gave me about 13 days to train for it. That is NOT enough time. But, I thought that I could probably walk 13.1 miles so I figured I would do the early start (at 6:30am) and do a walking and jogging combination to get me to the finish line.

Nick came with me to be my cheerleader and to potentially wheel me home if worst came to worst. We got downtown with about 25 minutes to spare. This provided lots of time for freaking out and jumping around, being excited. There is just something about being in a crowd of mostly positive people. The energy level gave me goosebumps. As you can see, it was still dark out when we got to the starting line. Notice that huge smile on my face - I COULD NOT wait to start!

Finally, after much anticipation, the whistle blew and we were off. The air was chilly and I was wearing only a pair of shorts and a tank top. I decided to go ahead and run a bit to warm up, figuring I would just start walking when I got tired. Well, guess what? I didn't end up walking more than a couple steps here and there, mostly just at the water stations.

I finished the half marathon with a time of 2:15:06, which absolutely THRILLED me. I was estimating that I would take over 3 hours to finish.

My Aunt Aileen and Uncle Scott did the full marathon, so we decided to all pose with our medals at their hotel room:

I am so proud of myself for doing this and I have decided that I want to train for a full marathon now. Who would have guessed, huh?