Big News!

I signed up for another race yesterday!  The big news is not really that I signed up for this race, but the other person who signed up with me!  Since I started running, I've always dreamed of crossing a half marathon finish line alongside my daughter.  She likes running 5K's, and last year, we did a virtual 10K together, but that's the farthest she's ever run (she's 13).

                                          After our virtual 10K last year.

Ever since her older brother ran his first half marathon in December, my daughter has been saying that she could never cover that distance.  Hubby and I have been encouraging her, and I told her whenever she thinks she wants to try it, I will run it with her.

A few weeks ago, we started talking about the Nashville Women's Half Marathon in September.  I told her it was a fun event for women, the course limit is 4 hours, and it's totally low key and no pressure.  She started asking if we could run/walk it and if I would stay with her for the whole race (which of course I told her I would) and I could tell she was seriously considering it.

She's said a couple of times in the last few weeks that she wants to do it, but I didn't want to rush her, so I held off on signing up.  Then on Wednesday we were at Science Olympiad practice (I'm one of the coaches) and the other coach was asking me if I had any races planned.  During our conversation I mentioned that daughter was considering the women's half, and the other coach said that daughter had already told her that, which was a really good sign that she was serious, in my opinion.

So, after one last conversation (Are you sure?  I don't want you to feel pressured? etc.) we decided to sign up, so it's official!  The race is 8 months away, but daughter wants to start running with me on the weekends, starting today.  Yea!  I'm so excited!

This also gives me some big motivation to reach my weight loss goal!  I want those race pictures to be epic!!  I've been feeling a little bad about my January weight loss, since I don't feel like I've made much progress, and today I'm actually up a few pounds from a few weeks ago.  But on January 1, I weighed 153, and today I'm 147.  I need to celebrate this 6 pound loss (even though probably half of that was water weight from the holidays/vacation).  I would like to be at a "healthy BMI" for the women's half.  For my height of 4'10", 120 is still "overweight," and 119 is "healthy."  So even though I would like to weigh around 115, like this picture from about 12 1/2 years ago...

...I would be happy to be "healthy" at 119.  From where I am this morning, that is 28 pounds.  So I've made a goal of losing 4 pounds a month, 1 pound a week, from now through September 1, to get me to 119.  This is what I feel is a totally realistic goal.  

So here I go!  I'll keep you posted!

Thanks for reading!