Search This Blog

Monday, December 8, 2008

Flying at the Kiawah half marathon

I want to thank everyone for their warm thoughts on Saturday. The weather was great for a 13.1 mile trek through the beautiful island of Kiawah, SC. It was an incredible journey. I was so psyched that I ran the first 10 miles (with Pam right beside me) a bit too fast. But it felt good. It was inspiring to see so many women out there spreading words of cheer and encouragement. I wanted to shot the people who lied and told me that the end was 'just around the corner', but is was all good. My friend Helen ran it under 2 hours is on her way to qualifying for Boston. (Yeah Helen)!

During the run as we were running out of energy Pam asked that we name all the people that we should pray for and pray for them right there on the run. The list was massive. It did a few things: made us think of others instead of our heavy legs, acknowledge that we were very blessed to just be healthy and able to run the race, show gratitude for the soldiers overseas who are facing much greater hardships than running three more miles, and understanding the depth of our friendship. It was an amazing day.

Right now my legs are a bit stiff and running my three mile recovery run was torture, but I got it done. During my run, I again prayed for all of the people on the list from Saturday and added a few more. I will do that every day that I run from now on. It makes my running less about me and more about others and that is a great thing.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very cool!! Congratulations.

Anonymous said...

Ladies! You rock. I love love LOVE that you made the run. What an inspiration you are. Thanks so much for posting this. And I love the idea of pray while running. How beautiful.
Cookie

Ruthy Watson, Ph.D. said...

Congratulations Doretha! As always you are an inspiration to me as I run.