Our Story...

Some of you that are participating here know me and Sherry from our personal blogs, but we also have several participants here that don't follow our personal blogs and just heard about the challenge from another participant... so... I wanted to introduce us!

Sherry has a personal blog HERE and Mine (Lesley) is HERE.  This past September, I posted about preparing to run the Heels and Hills Half Marathon (my 5th half).  Sherry commented on my blog asking if I wanted to meet up before.  From there we started e-mails back and forth and realized that our paces were very similar.  We agreed that we'd try to run some of it together.  We met for the first time about 60 seconds before the gun sounded at the starting line.  We look like Mutt and Jeff together.  I'm super tall and an Athena runner, and Sherry is super petite.  But regardless, we pushed almost the exact same pace.  By the way, this was Sherry's first half marathon.  There were parts where I was tired (the hills) and Sherry's motivation pulled me through, and then there was the end when Sherry was losing steam and I helped keep her going.  We crossed that finish line separated only by a couple seconds since I can't help but sprint the finish.

We also both ran the same first full marathon - White Rock Marathon, but we didn't run together since Sherry trained with a running group.  Despite running separately and having completely different days (hers comfortable and easy and mine starting too fast followed by massive pain and suffering), we finished only 2 minutes apart.  Pace twins.

On New Year's Day, we ran another half and agreed to not only stay together, but take it easy.  And we did... and it was an awesome run... again, at times she pulled me, and at times I pulled her. 

When you read this on Saturday, yet again, I will be running a half marathon with Sherry.  Little did she know that while she was writing this post, I was literally already halfway to the running store to register for the race so we could run together.  I texted her a photo of my bib as soon as I got it.  I had no clue she had posted to her blog about not wanting to run it alone!

So this challenge was brought to you by two runners, who met by chance via our blogs, and by some miracle run almost exactly the same pace, and who both LOVE bling.  Seriously?  Who doesn't love bling?

Thank you so much for joining in on the challenge.  We really spent some time going back and forth on ideas, and we wanted to make sure it was a challenge both beginners and advanced runners could participate in... and I love reading on race reports how you picked a race to make sure you got one in for the challenge.  I'm so glad it is encouraging people to set goals!  Happy running!