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This half marathon started out as a crazy idea from one person, who, supported by another person, managed to convince me it was possible... and the effect was like dominos. Many others who weren't entirely convinced it was possible joined the crew and the result has been incredible.

Likewise, your contribution - in the form of a donation of any amount, advice, desiring to volunteer at Familia Moja, helping our association here in Geneva (particularly with writing business proposals, calculations etc, that are not my strong point!) and encouragement - ALL will lead to achieving something incredible.

We did it!!!

This morning there were butterflies, nervous laughter and a tingling of excitement as we stood in the crowd waiting for the countdown. While the more experienced went on ahead to make amazing times, especially for the first-timers!, Kylie, Simone and I had the nice idea to try stay just in front of the 2hr purple balloon pace-runner. Well didn't that turn out to be optimistic!! ;-)

It was really hard to try keep a steady pace with all those people and we ended up running faster than we normally would have, and thus got tired quite a bit earlier...eeek!


I can't believe during the trainings I was saying "so, we've done 16km, we'll just need to add on 5km on the day". We'll JUST need to add on 5KM!!! Those last 5km were horrible. The best thing was that it was on a loop so we passed Nanou, Corina, Vlassis, Christian, Anne-Marie and others as they were on their way back and that was super encouraging!

But really, that was so tough. We couldn't have done it without our amazing cheersquad who were the loudest in Geneva for sure and special mention to a couple of my students who made a completely surprise appearance! :-D

Not afraid of hills anymore!!

Simone and I passed another milestone today - smashed the milestone, even! :-D We ran around Cologny - and it was OK! For those who don't know - Cologny is an area overlooking the lake and if you want to go on a nice bike ride through the vineyards and fields behind it, you have to go up a BIG, looong hill. I would never in my wildest dreams have considered it before today, and we were both hesitating, but what the heck! Last run, may as well do something crazy and see how it goes.

And all in all, I was a bit disappointed. It seemed a little steeper when I did it on the bike. But I guess that shows how much training actually pays off :-D It makes the impossible, possible!!

Mark my words, do not let your memories of the past determine what is possible for the future!!

So the half-marathon is finally around the corner and it's been quite an adventure. My memories of pain, tears and near-death seem very faint and I'm almost wondering what all the fuss was about. Don't get me wrong, it's still not easy to run that far ;-) but when I think about the night when Vlassis suggested it and how I felt...(nausea!) well it's been a real lesson in realising that the limits we have are often so much in our heads and have nothing to do with what we physically can manage.

Watch this space this weekend!!