Runner Girl {Years Ago}

Since Lauren's still been hanging out in the hospital, she's asked me to tell her a lot of stories about the times she spent in the hospital when she was younger, especially stories about the months she spent in Children's Hospital of Philadelphia waiting for her heart transplant. I've paid attention but none of the stories I've told have started with the letter R.

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon in Denver today, and I snuck outside for a short run. As I pulled on my running tights, I noticed that I had my pair with two tiny holes on the left leg. I smiled at the memories and decided this week's Blogging through the Alphabet post had to be about running.

A few years ago, a group of ladies at our church in Arizona started Couch to 5K training so that we could all run in the Race for the Cure 5K. There were a few friends in our neighborhood that were running but they ran awfully early in the morning. I couldn't bring myself to get out of bed as early as they did so I did the workouts on my own. (I had done Couch to 5K a few years earlier but had gotten out of practice following a knee injury.)

As Winter gave way to Spring and then Summer, I realized that afternoon runs would mean that I was running in the hottest part of the day. I decided that getting up early was really my only option. I joined the other ladies who got up before the crack of dawn to run.

It was the start of a wonderful friendship. We'd run, we'd talk, and then we'd pray together before heading back to our busy days as moms to busy families.

Along the way, we all finished the Race for the Cure and then went on to run in several more races together. Two of us even conquered a half marathon that included a grueling uphill run to the top of A mountain.

As for the holes in my running tights, I don't have an exciting or funny story. It was just a regular early morning run. We were cutting across a rocky area to get from the high school track back to the neighborhood. Somehow I stepped on a rock the wrong way and started to fall. I made a remarkable recovery, caught my balance, stumbled a few more steps, and then fell all the way down to the pavement. My palms were scratched, my knee was scraped, my favorite tights thankfully had a few tiny holes, but thankfully I wasn't hurt.

As I ran laps around the hospital today in Denver, I thought back fondly about all the early mornings the running girls spent together.



This week is the eighteenth week in our Blogging Through the Alphabet challenge -- letter R. Click the button below for this week's linky. It will open at 9:00 Eastern Time on Monday and stay open through Sunday evening.

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