half-marathon

For the past 9 months or so, I've been fundraising for autism research and preparing to do the Surf City Half-Marathon in Huntington Beach. I raised almost $1400, thanks to the generosity of my family and friends. I trained for 12 weeks to prepare. The night before the race, I got a text from one of my friends asking me if I got my bib yet. I just figured I'd get it the morning of the race. I wasn't too concerned until, as I was finishing loading music into my Shuffle, I looked for the race day instructions. And there in bold it said: There is NO race day pick up.
I started freaking out. I cried. I emailed everyone on our team. I hyperventilated and I may have thrown something. Then, I got a call from someone on the team who I hadn't met before and she kindly told me to show up at 5:30 a.m. to beg for my packet. I was so grateful, but still had a hard time sleeping.

So I woke up at 3 a.m. to drive to the beach. I got there at 4:30 and waited outside the tent until it opened. I was so relieved when they gave me a bib number! I could race!

13 miles is long. And I'm sore. Ryan met me at the end and he, I, and our friends from our team had a bunch of beers and hamburgers together. The fog cleared and it was 70 degrees and beautiful.

I'm very proud of myself for actually doing this. In some weird way, training for this and raising the money makes me feel like at least I'm making some contribution to help Elliott and other people with autism. On top of that, I ran it in 2 hours and 8 minutes, which was way faster than I expected!

It was a beautiful day.