winter arrived this morning with the clank and hiss of radiators, the tip of my nose cold. outside, it was snowing. on the last of my fall tomoatoes. on october 12. i'm really not ready for this.

running the half marathon was by far the hardest, or at least most time-consuming, of the goals on my 101 list, but probably the most worthwhile as well. over the past five months i've started to think of myself as a runner again. being a runner was once very important to me, and it's amazing to realize that i hadn't lost it forever.

the race itself was the easy part - it took five months and 250 miles and oodles of discipline to get TO the starting line; once i got there it was only another 13 miles to the finish. and i had the support of thousands of other runners and people cheering along the sidelines. (thank you, to all the friends and family who sent messages of encouragement over the past few days. it meant the world that you were thinking of me). i've trained enough that i felt confident i was going to finish, so my goal was just to have fun and feel good about the way i ran it. i finished in 2 hours 11 minutes and 2 seconds. that was just one minute over my goal time, which is a little disappointing, but i'm not wallowing in it. now that i've completed one half, i have a baseline for future race goals. i placed 692 out of 999 women in my age group. for the next race my goal is to be in the top half, which based on this year's results means a 2:05 time. no problem.

and yes, that means that i think there is going to be more running in my future. my friend callie is talking about us doing a marathon together next year. six months ago i couldn't fathom what it would take to complete a marathon. now that i've done the half i can imagine it (imagine the pain and the training time, also!) maybe next year? we'll see. over all i feel pretty good today (2 days later), my sore muscles are already gone, which means i think i was in pretty good shape for the way i ran it. the only nagging pain left is in my left foot. i'm hoping it's just a bruise, because it's making me pretty gimpy today. and if not for the foot thing, i'm ready to go back out and run again!