Kathleen's Adventures

On Sunday, September 20, 2009, I woke up to find countless missed calls and text messages on my cell phone. I was in Oklahoma City for a race Saturday and had apparently slept harder than I had in ages. Those calls and texts were from my best friend Mike. His sisters Katie and Kristi had been in a bad car accident in Houston the night before. A drunk driver rear-ended them and Kristi died at the scene. Katie walked away relatively uninjured, but it almost seems silly to say that now, looking back over the past 18 months since Kristi's death. Katie and the rest of their family are anything but "uninjured." They will never be the same. A few days after the accident, feeling more helpless than I ever had before, the idea for a "Race Against Drunk Driving" came into my head. Six weeks later, I crossed the finish line at Ironman Florida having raised over $15,000 for the SE Texas chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving in Kristi's memory. My donation was by far ...

So, this is about a month late, but oh well.  My marathon race report in song was a fairly comprehensive report in itself, and fun to write.  I may do more that way. At my last track practice the Tuesday before the marathon, Shawn told me he thought I had the physical ability and fitness to run well in the marathon. He said I just had to get right in my head about it; that he was worried all the crap that had gone on in the few weeks before that could leave my head in another place and less than confident. I walked away thinking (overreacting of course) "ugh! he thinks I'm too much of a head case to run well this weekend?!" But then I also realized that may have been the best thing he could have said. It almost seemed like a challenge - I felt like I had to prove that my head would be in the right place and that I would make it happen. I had to prove it to myself more than him, but it was certainly good food for thought. It was really weird driving to Houston and sta...