In dreaming of my plans for my 30th birthday celebration, I somehow got the great idea to run a half marathon. Jonathan planned to run with me, but during one of our training runs in January, it was quite evident his knees would not permit him to participate as planned. I pressed on with training, running toward my goal of completing that half marathon without stopping. My only intention was to run the whole thing. My brother Erik decided he’d join me for the fun! Sadly, his desire to train wasn’t as great as mine. His longest run before race day was four miles. FOUR MILES. I was concerned that he would sustain an injury or hate me by the end…

Time to make a run for it! Traffic isn't moving!

After running toward the Qwest events center, we arrived inside in time to get our numbers and goody bags and yay! we were ready for the race! This picture is a bit blurry, but it’s the best we got:

It's official!

I spent most of Thursday and Friday monitoring my water intake to ensure hydration for Saturday and Erik, well, he ate a bunch of peanut butter and honey sandwiches.

We got up early Saturday morning and hoped for the best! And then, another hour of jammed up traffic!

Not again!

And there were, of course, more people running on the side of the road:

He's ready to run! He's already running!

We were finally able to exit the freeway, then about ten minutes later, we decided to just get out and walk-that was around 7:20 and we’d been in the car for an hour and a half. We walked/skipped/ran to the start and just jumped the fence into the nearest starting group. We crossed the start line at around 7:40 though the event officially began at 7:00. The first five miles went by very quickly and were very enjoyable. It was a great day to be out running! The weather was beautiful, the bands were great, there were cheer groups from area high schools cheering us on and the general atmosphere was up beat and fun! We even saw a bald eagle in a tree right along Lake Washington!

Here are some photos of us finishing the race (from the race photographers, you can see more photos here):

Really happy to cross the finish line!

We planned to cross the finish line together, holding hands:

and we did it together!

As we were crossing the finish line, we could see Mom and Jonathan and Katherine and then Carrie, Brenda, Christi and Holly with their signs cheering for us as we finished! It was so wonderful. I was just really really happy that we did it and made it without injury. I think Erik was mostly happy to be finished and rather tired. We got some water and a banana, bagel, bag of chips (seriously! Sunchips were SO GOOD at that moment), a bottle of cytomax and then we stretched out and I got chilly so I wrapped up in a mylar blanket. It was fairly easy for us to find everyone at the family reunion area. 

And Erik is displaying his granola bar

Christi, Katherine, Brenda, Jonathan, Holly and Mom and I'm guessing Carrie is taking the photo.Thanks for being there to cheer us on! It was great to have such a crowd there for us! We love you!

He's a winner!

We were also able to miraculously find some of our friends! Here’s our friend Christi, who finished much faster than we did, but will still be my friend! Great job Olsons!

Christi and I get a photo together before we head out!

Thanks for being excited for us and for your encouragement!

After all the photo nonsense and some talking excitedly, we had brunch at the Portage Bay Cafe where I topped my french toast with every type of fruit I wanted at their toppings bar. Please excuse Jonathan’s elbow in this photo. He didn’t know how excited I was to take a photograph of my food.

Yummy french toast

We were all delightfully full after brunch and headed home where we cleaned up, skyped with Rachel and I took a nap in the yard then moved inside to take another nap in my bed. We had some Freshway Pizza for dinner and watched “Run Fatboy Run”. All in all, a very enjoyable day indeed.

That was such a fun time, I think we’re going to do another one! Anybody want to join me for the Super Jock n’ Jill half marathon on Labor Day? Looks like this one starts at Redhook in Woodinville, heads up to beautiful Bothell and then back down to Woodinville on the Sammamish River Trail. It’s going to be fun!

Big thanks to Jonathan who encouraged me to train and helped me find time in our schedule and did things like take me out to buy running gear and didn’t complain when we ate sandwiches for dinner on long run nights and is generally encouraging and wonderfully wonderful. Kelly and Erin, thanks for listening to all my random questions about running and for giving me a training plan and for offering to run with me even though we never found each other on race day! Carrie, thanks for being my friend and for being excited for me! And Mom, thanks for taking the bus early on a Saturday to see us cross the finish line! Wendy, thanks for your tips from afar-move back to Washington so I can have a running buddy (oh and the schools here are better and it’s not so hot and all that too).

Erik, I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t think you’d make it-but you did it! I’m impressed with your determination and your fierce love for me that made you brave the pain I know you were feeling on race day. Thank you for being such a great brother and good friend to me. I promise for my 40th birthday we’ll do something less intense, like maybe we’ll hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon or go fishing in Alaska or something easy like that, okay? Love you!