Half Marathon

Half Marathon from Stacey Barch on Vimeo.

I'm sorry I swear in this video, I was running up hill with strong wind at my face and it sucked. You can see the guy on a bike behind me struggling up the hill too.

I ran my first half marathon last Friday. It was a goal I had when I started to get serious about running, 3 months ago. I've trained and trained, and running it wasn't difficult. It made me realize that I can run a full marathon in October.

I ran from Frisco to Copper Mountain and back and ended up running 14.1 miles. Jesse was on his bike and pulled Maximus behind him. They supplied me with water along the way and spent time fishing in the ponds that were along the path I ran. Maximus caught a fish too!

My run was beyond entertaining- when I reached Copper Mountain, a dude on a bike came up next to me and started talking. We chatted and when I mentioned Jesse, he said, "oh nevermind" and I was dumb to not realize that he was hitting on me! Ha! I also watched the long boarders- there were a bunch of guys on long board skateboards just flying down the mountain on the paved trail. No helmets, no protection. I even ran through a flood! We've had something like 200% more snow this past winter, so with all of it melting, there's a lot of flooding. The path had a couple inches of water on it and I had to run through it, so I ended up with freezing cold, wet feet for more than half my run. When I got closer to the finish of my run, I witnessed a mountain rescue for a missing person who had flipped over in their kayak. That was freaky and sad.

But I finished and my legs hurt. I did it. I have permanent damage to my left foot from arthritis, so I'm taking a week off before I begin training for my full marathon. It feels amazing to reach a goal and I am so thankful for the love and support I have from Jesse and my family. I think after I finish my marathon, I'm going to spend all my fitness time on my bikes. I have 3 really nice bikes that are in the garage all sad because all I do is run and ignore them.