Rocking yesterday’s Shamrock Marathon!!

Today’s post is dedicated to my sister, Lindsey, who yesterday ran a 3:13 marathon — crushing her PR by 11 minutes after having worked extremely hard over the last three months to master training to get her to this moment.

Who knew a new mom could go this fast? She ran her first race — a half marathon with me — after having my nephew,  Marshall (now 9 months), and said it felt extremely slow. (Well, let’s be honest, it was actually a 1:46 half-marathon but…)

Even though Lindsey is probably naturally faster in some ways, it doesn’t mean she didn’t have to work very hard to get her to this moment.

We’re talking:

On February 10th of last month, she wrote: 

What I’m learning this training session– if you want to hit your goal marathon pace, and run to the best of your abilities, you should get your body used to running that pace on a fairly consistent basis.

Lessons learned and put into action. She did all this while juggling a new baby and a full-time job at Back on My Feet. In the midst of it, she made the huge decision to become a stay-at-home Mom, something many moms struggle with.

She went into the marathon with these thoughts: 

I’ve worked hard. 
I’ve pushed myself. 
My body is prepared. 
My mind is prepared. 
That’s what the key workouts were for. 
I’ve executed in workouts when I needed to execute, I’ve recovered when I’ve needed to recover. 

If you can start a marathon and be able to say THAT — then you know you’ve done your very best. I don’t think many of us can actually say that about most things. I don’t think I could have worked as hard as her, especially with a new baby.

Even going into the race, she was nervous. Doubts, anxiety, fears got into her head. Even the perfect training can meet bad weather, a stomach issue, unexpected hills or something else. One day pre-race, Lindsey wrote:

I didn’t work hard to put in mediocre effort on race day. While I feel doubtful about it at times, the pace and the distance just seems daunting. I am going to say out loud that I can do it and that I believe. And when it hurts on Sunday, I’m going to speak it out loud and I’m going to PUSH.

And push she did. I am totally obsessed with this video of her running with a pack of guys mid-marathon:

It takes dedicated HARD WORK to get a marathon like this. True, many people could work this hard and never see this time. However, I truly believe that most people do not put in the max effort before the race to see the best time they could get. I know I have not done it. I KNOW I could run a much faster marathon.

Relaxing post-race!

Anyway, I’m super proud of my sister and I’m so glad that back in 2008, she inspired me to run my first marathon. Running marathons has made my life better and showed me anything is possible. 

**You can follow Lindsey and her husband’s blog, Out for a Run, here! They are also Twitter fanatics: @LindseyHein and @Ghein83.

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