In January this year Phil and I had our 10 year anniversary. We sat enjoying a nice dinner and we wrote out a few goals for the year to accomplish as a couple. One of those goals was that Phil wanted to run a race with me. So, we picked the race. An autism 10k on April 24Th. Now came the training part. Phil plays basketball a few times a week with guys in the ward so he's in shape, but he doesn't ever run. The first 2 weeks he trained a bit with me. Then he stopped. Completely. Never to train again. I signed us both up for the race and then race day came. It was in Portland, so I made sure the kids had everything they needed. I forgot, however, important items like my ipod, garmin (to keep our pace), and gu packets (caffeine shots, which we really could have used because we were up with the baby so much the night before.) Oh well, we ran it anyway. We chose this race because my niece was diagnosed with autism. We made these cool shirts for her and collected some pledges to be given to the Oregon Autism research foundation.
We snatched a watch so we had some way of pacing ourselves. The race began. I know I was going a bit slower than I had the ability to go but I didn't want to kill Phil. :) I had a goal of running it under an hour, so that's what we were aiming for. We picked a nice, steady pace and held it there for half the race. When we hit the halfway point I let him know that it was time to kick it up a notch (and because I noticed there were several girls about my age and I really wanted to pass them.) Anyway, so we booked it, big time, and passed a bunch of people. As we would pass people a few times we heard, "that's right guys, you're running for Julia!" We came in at 58 minutes and 58 seconds. We ran 9 minute 30 second miles and had a great time! Phil is so sore he had to miss basketball and he has a HUGE blister on his foot. He got 1st (and last) place in his age group. I got 2ND place in my age group.
Liz drew us a picture and wrote "Winers" at the top. Phil said she better add another "n" or we're not winners, we're winers. But he did whine a bit, so it's a bit fitting for him ;)
That being said, I loved racing with him, we were singing Rocky and Speed Racer and laughing and having fun. That's what it's all about.
Here's a few pictures.
