On May 25th I published The Good Life Halfsy as a promise to myself of great things to come. I wrote it just a few days after signing up to run my first half marathon – an important component to my journey to regain my spiritual health.
Sunday morning, with 550 miles of running training — a smile on my face and peace in my heart — I packed my FAITH to race with GRACE.
Fortitude Gratitude
Attitude Resilience
Integrity Acceptance
Trust Compassion
Hope Eloquence
My favorite farmer filmed the finish of the race so that I could share it with you 🙂
God had my back and I learned in a very tangible way that my faith could be stronger than my fear.
My high school Cross Country coach would likely tell you that my running form still needs some work 😉 but, I overcame that with grit and determination to finish the race in a time of 1:42.49. I negative split the race (ran the second half faster than the first) with an average pace of about 7:50 per mile.
It’s amazing what happens when you open your heart and mind and let God’s presence fill your soul. I trained and then completed the race with no stop watch — a decision that I made before beginning the journey in order to help myself to learn to let go of control and just BE.
Somewhere along the journey, I learned to lean on God. To find joy and peace in the times that we spend together each day, as well as strength to overcome the physical and mental barriers that had plagued me since my battle with Graves Disease more than ten years ago.
As I crossed the finish line, I was proud of me.
Proud of the person that I found deep inside of myself during the training journey.
Life is about much more than any one race or moment in time. The lessons learned along the way carry you forward on the road to excellence. I found that I needed to build the muscle of hope in my heart just as much as I needed to build the muscles in my legs.
When you build the muscle of hope, then faith supports you on the journey!
Feed Yard Foodie 
Did you beat AG???
Ashley Grace had a great race — finished about 4 minutes ahead of me. I am incredibly proud of her. She packed her faith to find the strength to race despite a knee injury that plagued her all fall. Her finish time was 1:38:43.
She is an inspiration to me — and makes her Mama proud 🙂
Our love to everyone!
Anne
great insights… thanks for sharing this part of your journey for us to learn from. it definitely encourages me.
John,
Your mentoring has inspired me on the journey. Thank you for your weekly words of wisdom. I truly value your leadership and am very thankful that God led my path to cross with your’s. You and Julie have touched my life. Thank you for sharing the joy in your hearts.
All the best,
Anne
Congratulations! You finished way before I did!
Thank you, Jennifer! Congrats to you as well — I hope that your race journey brought you peace as well. The weather was beautiful and I very much enjoyed all of the awesome local fans that lined the streets to cheer us on 🙂 We live in an awesome place!
Take care,
Anne
THAT IS SOOOO AWESOME!!
thanks for giving God credit and not being ashamed of your faith.
I’m all about faith, farm and family!
Thanks for the inspiration as I need to train for a 10K.
Excellent ending time on your race! wow.
Thank you, Kim! The journey of training and competing was a good one — and there was a lot of God in the journey. I have learned a lot over the past several months 🙂
Best wishes for an awesome 10K! I am a big advocate of putting away the stop watch (smart device) and just letting your body and your heart guide you in the training process. Maybe it’s just because I have passed that “over 40 threshold” so I look at athletics a bit differently; but I am a believer in allowing yourself to find an element of peace as you feet pound out the miles.
All the best,
Anne
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