If you haven’t noticed over the last 6 (!!!) years of my blogs, I love talking about what I’m doing and what’s coming up, especially when there’s a big event on the horizon. When I was training for my last half marathon, I chronicled a lot of the training runs over on my Instagram stories. So it shocked more than a few people when I posted last week that I had just finished my first ever marathon. Here’s the story behind the surprise!

All the way back in May 2017, some friends in our Bible study group decided to sign up for the 2018 One City Marathon and spur each other on during the long training runs. Always up for a challenge, and one of the few in the group who already enjoyed long runs, I enthusiastically signed up and began to chart out my training plan. I signed up for a half marathon in the fall and trained so well I crushed it, placing first in my age category and third among women.

In the meantime, though, one big piece of life changed…