Shine

The words" Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine" most spoke to me this week. Ever since January I have been training for the Ogden Marathon with my younger sister, Laura. Two weeks ago, Laura sustained an injury and didn't know if she'd be able to run the race on May 16 or not. Last Wednesday, May 13, she decided she wouldn't run. I was terrified to run the race alone. I told her and the rest of my family that I wasn't going to do it. Finally, on Friday, they convinced me to run the race without Laura. Both of my sisters said to me, "This is your chance to get out there and run hard. You're a fast runner. You could run a really fast race because you won't have either of us to slow you down."

Saturday morning, I intended to run the race alone, but then my pacing watch that I had borrowed from Laura was dead and I had no way of keeping track of time. Thus, I started running the race with Laura's friend and neighbor, Jen who had a pacing watch. I felt really good and had to hold myself back a bit to run with Jen, but I was still so fearful of running alone that I stayed with her until mile 18. At that time, she said to me "You can run faster than this. Go ahead." So, I mustered up courage and started running at the pace my body felt natural to do. I did that for the last eight miles. To put it in the words of the quote, I finally allowed myself to"come out from behind the clouds." Amazingly, I did "shine." I ran the last eight miles at a sub eight-minute mile pace and finished strong at 3 hours 28 minutes and 24 seconds. Ironically, though the finish time was good, it doesn't really matter to me. What matters most is that I was finally had the courage to run on my own.