Family

She Did It!

I am so proud of Breanna! Earlier this year, she announced that she'd be running the Omaha Marathon on September 25th, and she immediately started training for it. Every day, she and her running partner, Adam, ran neighborhoods, parks, and lakes, all in an effort to be ready to run 26.2 miles on race day.

About a month away from the day of the marathon, her knees started giving her trouble, and after many arguments with herself, she finally decided to shoot for the half-marathon instead. It was a hard decision for her to make, but one I'm very relieved she went with, considering she's only got one pair of knees, and she's awfully young to begin a life of troubles with them.

The longest she had ever run was 10 miles on the beach in California, and other than that, her college and work schedule had only allowed her about 3-5 miles per day, if that. Needless to say, she was very nervous on the day of the race, worried  she wouldn't be able to run the entire distance. Heaven forbid she should walk!

We arrived downtown at 5:30 am so they could pick up their race packets and get warmed up… Here we are, standing in line. No, not for the race packets, but for the portable toilets!

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Adam took advantage of the waiting to stretch… it was a chilly 40 degrees out, so everyone was probably pretty stiff…

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This is Mike's "Don't you dare cut in line" look…

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(Just kidding. I have no idea what he was looking at. All I know is he hadn't had any sleep for 24 hours, thanks to his work schedule.)

In the front are the professional runners in uniform. I have no idea where Adam and Bre disappeared to, but the line goes pretty much back to that second set of traffic lights waaaay in the back…

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After the runners took off, Mike and I headed to a nearby restaurant for breakfast, waiting until we thought Adam and Bre would be approaching the finish line, and then we headed over there.

I wasn't prepared for Adam to suddenly appear, but there he was! He finished his half marathon in about an hour and 50 minutes or so…

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A huge congratulations to you, Adam! Well done!

As Adam headed toward his finish line, Mike and I started anxiously looking for Bre. We waited and looked… then waited and looked some more. Mike started pacing, nervous that Bre had twisted her ankle or passed out somewhere. Or worse yet: that she had started walking. (We had tried convincing her that there was no shame in walking, but she was hearing none of that!)

And then I saw her bright pink Nike shorts. 🙂 "Mike! There she is!" I yelled, bc he had walked a little way away from me.  But of course, he'd already seen her, and she'd spotted him, a big smile on her face…

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I heard him yell, "GO BRE! GO! YOU'RE ALMOST THERE!" and I started yelling the same thing, while also trying to get pictures…

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I wanted to cry, bc it was then that I realized I was so afraid for her that she wouldn't finish. It meant so much to her to reach her goal, and I knew she'd had a lot of difficulty with training for it, so to see her come down the line with a smile on her face and a look of such satisfaction filled me with so much happiness…

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It was at this point that I ran as fast as my legs would carry me to try to beat her to the finish line, cutting through hundreds of people. I wanted to get pictures of her crossing, but the way had been blocked off to us, so I stood where I could and got a few blurry ones (thanks to my having a near heart-attack from running so hard).

As soon as she realized that she was so close to the finish line, her head popped up and she took off at a sprint…

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GO GO GO, BRE!!!

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Her official time was exactly 2:05:00! She placed 490th out of 1,362 runners, and in her age group (20-24) she was 104/202. I was so very, very proud of my girl.

Here's Adam, with his medal.. he was quite ready to go back home and hit the sack…

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(My favorite picture of the day…)

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Believe it or not, they both said they wouldn't mind doing it again next year.  😉

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Congratulations, Adam and Bre!

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And I have to add: Bre didn't walk a single step for the entire 13.1 miles. 😉

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