Until 2015, I had never run more than three, maybe four miles consecutively. Not once. Never ever.

Even after four years of running track very competitively in high school. Never had I ever been a distance runner. See running has always been a part of my life. I’ve always been pretty fast so running sprints had been my jam since freshman year. If I hoped on the treadmill at the gym, I’d briskly jog a mile and then do 30 second or 1 minute sprints. If I ran outside, I was good for about two miles, three tops.

So when my friend Caitlin asked if I would run the Kentucky Derby Festival Mini Marathon, it took some convincing. But after having Reese, I wanted to push myself to do something I’d always avoided especially since I figured the training would help shed the rest of my baby weight.  When Caitlin sent me her confirmation email on New Year’s Day, I knew I had to do it too. So I made it my New Year’s Resolution and I signed up.

If you think this is the part of the story where I talk about adopting a rigorous training regimen – running every day, counting miles, building up to running 10, 11, 12 miles – you would be wrong. I did look at a schedule, may have even printed out but I never stuck with it. Instead, I just committed to running three times a week with a goal of at least three miles each time. Sometimes it was more, sometimes it was less. Thankfully at the time, my treadmill still worked so I’d even get some long runs in while catching up on my DVR. But in all honesty, I never ran more than six miles straight in the four months leading up to the race. And I think I only ran that far twice.

Here’s the thing though, on the morning of the race, I woke up and knew I could do it. It may have been raining and I may or may not have worked a party the night before and been out until 1 am but it didn’t matter, I was running this thing. And that’s exactly what we did.

Caitlin and I ran all 13.1 miles together, never stopping despite the rain and my intense desire to sit down and never get back up. Was it hard? Yeah. Did we run it in pretty average time? Yeah probably. Was I sore for three days afterwards? Hell Yeah. But not once during the race did I consider quitting. I figured if I could do it once, I could check it off the list and never do it again.

About 3/4 of the way through, I decided that as long as I kept shuffling my feet, I’d get there faster than walking. So every time I wanted to stop, I just kept shuffling. Then we’d pass a group of people cheering or I’d see the next mile marker and get a little burst of energy. It was like that until the finish line. And to be totally honest, I got a little emotional. My grinch heart grew three sizes that day because I had done something that was genuinely hard and that I never thought I’d accomplish. Done, checked it off the list.