St Jude Marathon Weekend

This past weekend was the St Jude Marathon Weekend in Memphis and I ran the half marathon instead of the marathon like I had planned, as a hero.  As I sit here on Sunday night writing this, I really don't know where to begin.  I posted on Facebook shortly after the race that I had so many thoughts and emotions about it and one friend wanted me to share.  A thought a blog post was more appropriate than I Facebook status.

I woke up at 4am and just couldn't go back to sleep.  I just tried to relax and watched some television and finally got up about 5 o'clock.  Jason was going to pick me up and we were going to make the trip to downtown Memphis together.  After breakfast sandwich from McDonald's, I was ready.  We met some of the runners on our team, Team Corinth, in the Double Tree Hotel lobby and had a good visit with them.

I decided to call Kade and we finally met up with each other and started our third race together.  Although we didn't know each other at the beginning of our first race
, we still count it.  Thankfully we didn't have to wait long to actually start our race.  It was about 20 minutes after the gun went off.

I couldn't believe all the people that were lined up along the streets!  Many holding signs and many cheering!  The weather was cool and it got worse.  Along the river, the wind was blowing and I got really cold and then finally the wind calmed down.  Unfortunately, it picked back up again and never died down again.

One of the most amazing parts of the course was on the St Jude campus.  The emotions that I felt as I saw those kids and gave many of them high fives, is more than I can describe in print.  After I exited the campus, I wanted to just sit down and have a good cry.  I carried a picture of a little girl with me the entire race.  I was thinking about her and her family and just when I wanted to quit, I'd look at her smiling face in that picture and keep going.  The energy along the course was awesome too!

As a St Jude hero, we committed to raising money for St Jude and got to wear a special singlet that identified us a such.  Many people along the course were shouting, "Thank you heroes!"  These people were thanking us!  Although I felt like, to borrow Jeff's term, a superstar, those kids and their familiar are the superstars.  We as runners endured wind, rain, heat, cold and many other things during training, but these people that we thanking us, endure far more than I as a runner will ever endure.

I am so thankful I have the ability to run and can use it to help a great cause.  This was my final event of 2014 but it won't be my last St Jude event.  I am so looking forward to running again next year and helping the kids.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post and if you have comments or if you ran this race, please share your thoughts in the comments below.