One Year Ago Today

One year ago today, I had life saving surgery that not only prolonged my life, but has improved the quality of my life immeasurably. I have never regretted making this choice. And I hope to never take this gift and opportunity at a second chance for granted.

Shortly after having the surgery, I decided that I wanted to run a 5K. (I don't know what I was thinking!) I invited my family - of very fit people - to join me and I was really excited that so many of them were willing to do so. I have spent the past year training and have had some ups and downs, but last week was the day.

My dad and I went to pick up the race packet for everyone in our family. They were organized by bib number, which was determined by when you registered.

Here are the 14 bibs for our family. We actually had 16 racers, but the two youngest kids didn't get registered.

Here are some of us before the race. My kids and mom did the mile race instead of the 5K. Pictured here with me and David are my dad, my sister in law, Shanelle, and her four boys. My brother, Erik, had started running from his house about 20 minutes away and caught up with us shortly after the race started.

We didn't run the whole thing. We probably ended up running about a third of it. David could have run me into the ground, but he wanted to stay with me. Gotta love him.

Here is a shot of all the racers. We are joined here by my mom and kids, my brother Scott, his wife, Beth, and their two children.

I later found out that neither of my amazing sister in laws had ever run a 5K before. They are both incredibly physically fit, but they trained for the 5K so they could do it with me. I really lucked out in the sister-in-law department.

You can go HERE to see the results, locate a specific runner and even watch them cross the finish line. As you can see from the awesome certificate I can print for myself, I took 70 out of 77 for my age group. At least I wasn't last!

I was so proud of myself, I wore my medal all day.

Two of my siblings weren't able to run with me. My sister, Tiffani, was in the Outer Banks in North Carolina, but she ran anyway, just to show her support of me. Here is her facebook post about the occasion:

I am so blessed to have so much support. I belong to a couple of support groups and I often read of others who do not have the support of family or loved ones. That has never been the case for me.

Perhaps most shocking of all is the fact that I agreed to run the swimming leg of a triathlon with David and Shanelle next week. I am TERRIFIED, but really excited to try it. The swim is 1/2 mile. I tested myself in a swimming pool last week and was able to swim the half mile in 32 minutes. It will be completely different in open water. Erik and I are going to a local reservoir tomorrow so I can practice. I even squoze myself into my dad's wetsuit. (Not pretty!)

My life is so different from what it was a year ago. I am truly blessed to have been given this second chance.

NOTE: This post is copied from the blog that I have been keeping of my weight loss journey. I have not made that blog public until now. It can be read HERE.