Looking back on my Princess journey

I'm participating in a blog hop over at Kristy Runs Kato that is all about Princess Half Marathon recaps. As part of it, each blog links up with a direct link to their Princess race recap. I kept trying to decide which of my three recaps I wanted to use. I love my first recap from 2011 even though that race was nothing like I thought it would be. I was swept and felt very differently about it than I ever expected. I also wanted to link up to my 2012 recap about finally finishing the Princess. For me, 2013 was just a bad race day so that one wasn't really a contender but the first two are really special to me so I decided I would just make a new post and link back to both of those recaps.

Here you can read about my very first experience at the Princess Half Marathon. The post is entitled 8 miles and is about a lot more than just the race. It's about what led me to start the journey to change my life and how a little failure can be the push you need to start moving forward.

After my experience being swept, I decided I wanted to try again at the 2012 Princess Half Marathon. Eight months after my first Princess, my husband deployed for a year and I knew I would need something to keep me busy. I knew that if I signed up for the race again I would have to train and keep myself motivated while he was gone. In all of the craziness, I also signed up for the Inaugural Tinkerbell Half Marathon and had the goal of not only finishing one half marathon but two within a month and earning my Coast to Coast medal. A fellow army wife and close friend decided to run with me and a few friends from college joined us and we made a week long girls get away vacation out of it. We had an absolute blast and I finally accomplished the goal that I had set for myself a year and a half earlier.

I hope you enjoy both of these recaps and get a little something from them. I don't really talk much about character stops and all of that, but I do talk about what it feels like to run that course and find failure and success. I hope that any new readers who found me through the blog hop would stick around to see more of my journey. So many things have changed since that first Princess and even though I still have a long way to go, I know I am getting there one step at a time.

And if you really want to read about 2013's race, you can find it here.

 This is pics from each of my three races. Things have really changed.