Big Small Town

I ran the St. Jude half marathon on Friday. Woohoo! That afternoon I was promising myself I would never do such a thing again... but I am already feeling the itch of "I could get a better time next year." We will see. I definitely was NOT running for time-- my goal was to finish. However, we finished around 2 hours 33 minutes, which is better than I was expecting.

"We" was me and 5 other residents who stuck together the whole way. We even crossed the finish line holding hands 6 across!! I am hoping that our finish line picture managed to have all of us in it. Here's a shot from before the race (with 2 other MTRers who ran much faster than us).

It was long and painful, but surprisingly the miles went by pretty quickly. I will say I'm not sure that I've ever done much physically harder than running miles 11-13. Ouch.

Anyway, on to the title of this post.... Memphis is such a "big small town." I saw so many people running or cheering for the races that I did not know would be there. Aside from the obvious MTR crew and my parents who came to Overton Park to cheer around mile 9, I saw: two girls I went to high school with, an old pastor from my mom's church (who absolutely did not recognize me when I called his name and waved), friends from college, the mothers of two friends of mine (who were both working the finish line), my high school art teacher, a professor from Rhodes, and a friend of a previous roommate. My parents also saw my elementary school principal running the race. Such a small world, Memphis is!