Matt and I left the house Saturday morning on our way to Blacksburg for my ten mile race.  I had gotten plenty of rest… the race didn’t start until 1:00pm so we were not rushed and the weather was warming up nicely..

We ended up getting to the race early and were killing time reading the paper and just chatting after I registered for the run… my brother came to see me off as well… I caught up with Alison and some of her friends and was feeling a little bit nervous but excited…  I had not run the part of the Huckleberry Trail that was included in the 10 mile loop so I really didn’t know what to expect…

The first part of the race was through neighborhood streets… they were familiar to me… growing up in town I had driven them many times and they were relatively flat… then we got on the part of the trail that has been around for years and years… I remembered walking the trail with my mom as a child… the memories were sweet and comforting… we got to mile 5 or so and then the new part of the trail started…

Alison had run on the new part of the trail in college… she mentioned that it had some rolling hills… I also made the mistake of wearing my nearly new running shoes… my left foot developed a pain that made me think the front part of it might break off at mile 7… I even said out loud at one point “mind over matter.”

Just as we were getting to the first hill (I didn’t realize how many there would be) there was a message written in chalk in big letters… “I LOVE HILLS” - I don’t… but as we would start a climb we would talk about how great it felt to be running up the hill and how much we loved it… sometimes through gritted teeth on my end…

Our goal was to run the ten miles at at least a 9 minute mile pace… we beat that goal and finished in 1:28….

I was back at the school a few hundred yards from the finish line when I heard someone yell my name… It was Matt… it made me smile and think less of the excruciating pain in my left foot… he said with a smile as he ran the last little bit along with me, “You look pretty good for someone who just ran 10 miles…” that was all of the encouragement I needed to finish up pretty strong… Alison and I finished at the same time and are well on our way to our Shamrock Half Marathon goal of less than 2 hours (the race is now 25 days away)

After the race we got to spend time with my family and went to dinner for my aunt’s birthday… and then… it gets better… on Sunday one of my neighbors who was actually in the race left a medal on my front door with a note saying I got third place in my age group…

As I was running with my friend Alison in the Blacksburg Classic Saturday we came across a message in chalk…about 6 miles into the Blacksburg Classic