My Wife, The Runner

Ever since Charly was born, Kelli has been determined to become a runner. She renewed our rec center passes. She even routinely used the rec for a while. I had good intentions too, but eventually, balancing school and Charly and everything else was just too much. Running and exercising were not high on either of our lists of priorities. But still, Kelli wanted to run.

One day Jodi called and told Kelli that part of the Des Moines Marathon was a 5K Road Race. She had signed the two of them up! Now Kelli had no choice. She was going to run.

5K equates to about 3.1 miles. The weeks leading up to the race, Kelli started running at the rec center again. Then baby Cruz came along and threw off her routine a little. She knew she could run 3 miles, but she never wanted to go into the race cold. Before we knew it, race weekend was here and she had never really trained the way she wanted to. But it didn't matter. Her and Jodi's goal was to finish in under 35 minutes. And they did. By 1 minute! And they didn't stop running once!

Charly was a trooper. The race began at 8:30 last Sunday morning and it was chilly. But she didn't peep throughout. Blaine and I, Charly and her cousins Cooper and Brooks walked to where we thought the halfway point would be to cheer them on. We saw one of my 5th graders from Lincoln and cheered for him too. Little did we know at the time, the he went on to finish 41st overall out of 800 runners. It wasn't before long, the boys spotted Kelli and Jodi coming down the road. The boys started screaming and I think the encounter boosted the girls' spirits! We hurried back in the direction of the finish line and made it in plenty of time to see them cross. They did awesome! We were all very proud.

Nearly 800 runners raced in the 5K. Nearly 4,000 ran in the half marathon and just over 1,600 athletes ran in the full marathon. The atmosphere in Des Moines was incredible. If being there didn't inspire you to run, I don't know what could! Kelli and Jodi are determined to run the half-marathon next year while Blaine and I decided we could do the 5K dressed as Mario and Luigi!

Good job girls!