A Half for Someone Else

I’m running a half marathon this weekend. I’m running it with my neighbor. It’s her first race. I met her when we were 7 and 8 months pregnant at a neighborhood barbeque; she was a month ahead of me. She mentioned that she was still running four plus miles a day. I was impressed and thought she must be a serious runner. Why else would she still be waddling along this late into her pregnancy? Turned out she just ran for exercise and mostly logged her miles on a treadmill in a small storage room on weekdays. She didn’t seem to consider herself a “runner” per se, at least not my definition of a runner.

After the babies and a few playdates with the older kids, I casually offered to join her on one of her Saturday morning outside runs. At that point I was in need of someone to be accountable to- someone to get me out the door. It worked as planned and I soon had a running buddy. Soon I was pushing her to go farther and faster. When I told her I was running the Oakland Half Marathon she was interested. She wanted to do a race, but had never “ran in circles” with people who signed up for races.

So Saturday we are running the Mermaid Half Marathon on the trails behind our neighborhood. I’m curious how she’ll approach it because she’s not one for fancy running clothes or even taking in fluids on our runs. I know she’ll easily handle the distance as we’ve been slowly building her mileage and we ran 12 miles last weekend. I won’t be setting any PRs because I intend to pace her through her first race. I figure I’m just along for the ride on this one. I’ll get satisfaction seeing someone complete their first official race. We all know how much pleasure it brings me when I get to share my love for running with someone else.

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