old school sunday

I like to take the occasional Sunday to post photos of our lives before kids. Since this blog is mostly about our journey as parents, it's fun to look back to that time in our lives when we didn't have children.

I ran my first ever race - a 5k - in 2008. I had always made fun of runners. They were so unnecessarily serious, it seemed. And they always looked miserable. Rarely do you see a runner smile as he's running.

That is, until I started running myself. I discovered that it's addictive. I set out to run a 5k, and by the time I got pregnant with Jude, I was running 13 miles at a time in preparation for a half-marathon.

In between pregnancies, I got back up to running six miles, but running got put on the back burner when my business started. Then I got pregnant again. One day...one day...I will again wake up to get in an early morning run. One day an "easy" run will be five miles. One day I'll set my sights to that half-marathon I never did, and will even begin looking towards running a marathon. I really miss running. I'd even say I ache for it - a part of myself that I've lost in parenthood and that I'm longing to get back.

Pre-race! You can tell how early it is by how squinty my eyes are. The earlier the squintier.

Post-race.

I had been battling a tough chest cold the days before the race and because of that - I wasn't able to run the entire 5k. I got to the last half mile and had to start walking - defeatedly. I had on my headphones and was getting so frustrated with myself when I all of a sudden heard flip flops flopping on the pavement behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Shawn (who had come merely for support) running up behind me. "Come on," he said, "Run with me." My husband ran beside me as I finished that last half-mile, and endured strange looks from other runners as they watched the guy running in flip-flops and khaki shorts. Right before the finish line, Shawn ran to the side and let me cross the finish. I was tired and mad at myself, but I knew that I had a husband who supported and even admired me. I knew that no matter what we went through, he'd be running right next to me.