She isn’t the "little old lady from Pasadena," and she wasn’t driving a fast car down Colorado Boulevard. Instead, Oma Monica ran the Dallas White Rock half marathon today.

Wife Monica was never much of a runner – at least not until this year. She never really liked running. When we lived in Dayton, Ohio some 30 years ago, she managed to increase her distance to one mile on a high school track near the apartment where we lived. Since then she hasn’t done much running at all, although she did plenty of walking and biking commuting to her job in Bonn from our apartment across the Rhine.

About this time last year I started running again after a ten year layoff. After I ran the Bonn marathon in April, Monica was challenged enough to start running herself. Her goal: to run a half-marathon. Not bad for someone who had never run more than one mile.

So she started a training program. Running in Mobile, Alabama in the middle of the summer is a challenge, since the humidity wears you out about as much as the running itself. But she kept plugging along, gradually increasing her distance. Today she completed the Dallas White Rock half marathon in 2:44:44, good for 4418th place in a field of 5217 finishers overall. In her age group she finished 91st of the 147 finishers. But that wasn’t important for her – finishing the race was!

I ran the half marathon, too, finishing in a time of 1:53:49. That was about seven minutes slower than my time at the Cologne half-marathon two months earlier. I cannot explain the difference, other than the weather in Dallas was not too pleasant: low 40s and drizzle. Anyway, I finished, too.

Our son Ted wanted to run with us, but he had an injury that prevented him from participating. He has already committed to being ready for next year’s race.