I'm a Winner!!!!

This morning I ran a 5K (3.1 miles) that a local church was sponsoring to raise money for AIDS work in Africa. I asked a few different people if they wanted to do it with me, but they either didn't want to or were busy, so I ended up going by myself.

I made a friend there who actually goes to the same church as me and the same college/young adult group while I was waiting for the race to start! How fun! We'd never met each other before and ran part of the race together. I thought that was particularly ironic because the reason I got into running in the first place was to build relationships with girls at my home church when they were training to do the Race for the Cure together. Tiff and Rachel, I was especially remembering you today! They are so good at pace setting! And we're similar in speed. AND I just like them a lot! God has been giving me more boldness in initiating contact with non-NMSI people. I think that's exciting!!!

By the way, I got third place in my age division! Can you believe it!??! I got a bronze medal in a race!!! I think that's pretty funny! (Yes, there were only a few hundred people there, so I'm not actually sure how many people there were that were in my age division). But there is still reason to celebrate, especially since it will probably never happen again! WOW!! It is especially wonderful because I just decided to sign up for the race on Wednesday night (this is Saturday/race day) and did a "practice run" on Thursday to make sure that I could still run three miles. Lately I've been biking more than running----I looked up my weekend bike riding route (created by my friend Sarah) on www.mapmyrun.com and it was 18 miles! Isn't that crazy!?!? One of the benefits of living in Florida is consistent sun, which makes me smile!!!!!!!!!!

Do you like my pretend running pose? That's the cord of my camera case on the ground :0)