Treasured Necklace

Recently, I came across this post on a blog I read regularly, Rantings of an Insecure Chubby Girl.  At the end of the post, she showed off some cool running penants she'd gotten in the mail and was wearing on a necklace.

I'm not sure why I didn't post about this before (well, I do know why, after the holidays always seems crazy and busy), but I thought I'd do a special post about one of my favorite recent Christmas gifts.

For Christmas 2011, my folks (really, my mom, I know this gift was 100% her doing), gave me this necklace:

 

Hopefully those pictures turn out. If not, it's 3 little pieces of metal hanging from a single loop on a necklace. One says "Run", one says "26.2", and one says "Boston." On the back of the Boston one, it has my name and it says 4/18/11, which was the day I ran the Boston marathon after years of thinking of the race and attempting to qualify.

My mom runs too and has always been one of my biggest fans. She knew how much my BQ meant to me and she was actually at the race where it happened -- the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon. That race has both the marathon distance and a 10 mile race, and she and my husband had both run the 10 miler (while my brother and his wife, my cousin, and some friends) also ran the marathon. So she saw me shortly after I crossed the line and knew that I'd (finally) done it. And since I always go home for Christmas, she was also there for Christmas of 2010 when my husband gave me a running book and plane tickets for us to go to Boston.

It's one of my favorite pieces of jewelry and I'm wearing it more frequently these days as I try to stay focused on the goal at hand -- my dream PR in Berlin on September 29.