Gate River Run 2011 | Jacksonville, FL

If you don’t know by now by my incessant tweeting and facebooking, I’ve been training for the Gate River Run’s 15k race. On March 12th, I did the Gate River Run! I did my first EVER race and my first EVER 15k! Many of you know that I started running back in November 2009, however a leg injury in February of 2010 kept me off of running until September 2010. Since September 2010, I’ve been running every week, 3-4 times per week. When I was convinced I was going go sign up for the Gate River Run’s 5k, my mom derailed me and encouraged me to sign up for the 15k… Six. Weeks. Before. The. Race. She’s crazy, right? I thought so too, but ladies and gentlemen… She sold me on doing the 15k for the “stuff.” Yup… I caved into materialism. I wanted the medal at the end! The 5k didn’t give medals! So, there I was… 6 weeks out and I had to now train for triple what I had already trained for. Insane!

Now, before I go on, I need to mention my little brother’s girlfriend, Corrie. She’s been working out with me since October. She also trained with me and I may not have come as far as I have if it wasn’t for her encouragement, support, and pushing. Now, we are known as “Team Awesome.”

So, there she and I were… 6 weeks out. We decided to go for it. Before we knew it, we were running Bartram Park every week trying to work our way up to a 15k. For those of you who don’t know, that is 9.25 miles… aka a looooooooong way!

I finished the Gate River Run with pretty good stats for my first time! I finished at 1 hour 54 minutes. I placed 10,893 out of 16,575 finishers & 17,000 participants. I placed 911 out of 1324 in my age group. I’m super happy!

I’ve lived my whole life with severe asthma. I’m also very over weight. I’ve lost 19.5lbs overall, but still have about 40 to get where I want to be. I NEVER NEVER NEVER thought I’d EVER be a runner, much less an athlete (I use that term loosely). I’m very happy to be where I am today and I hope that my story can inspire others to get active and make better food choices. I have another blog that I write called “According To Jen.” It’s a life and living blog. I wrote all about my journey and what I use when I run here, my lifestyle change (eating) here, and all about how I eat out at restaurants here. With that said, here are the photos from this very memorable day.

*Special thanks to my husband, Colby, for taking the photos.

Here I am about to cross the finish line!

Team Awesome High Five! That’s the letter “A” for awesome in sign language :)