Across the Miles

Because I know she likes to get up in the morning and check my blog to see if I’ve written anything, thispost is all about my BFF Chandra.

See, here’s the deal. Chandra and I met during freshmen orientation week at Angelo State University in San Angelo, TX (almost 14 years ago…yikes! When did that happen?!). I was a good 4 ½ hours from home, which is saying a lot, because even then, I was the biggest homebody ever. My roommate and I were headed out to one of the events they had planned for us, and out of the room at the end of the hall came Chandra and her roommate. And that, my friends, was that. We’ve been fast friends ever since. We even lived together in an apartment for a while, until I painfully made the decision to return home after 2 years in San Angelo. Oh, she's going to kill me for this one, but look what I found:

But our friendship survived the miles between us. Chandra was in my wedding in 2002, and my husband, daughter, parents and I flew out to Lake Tahoe so I could be in hers 2006. Chandra has lived in Nebraska, California and now Montana, but that hasn’t kept us from being the best of friends.

We don’t get to see each other nearly as much as we’d like, but we do keep up through phone calls, emails, and Facebook.

And while I don’t know her whole “running story,” I do know that she has fallen in love with the sport since the birth of her second daughter this past spring. And it’s just one more connection for us. We’re able to bounce ideas off of each other, commiserate the latest aches and pains, and celebrate our accomplishments together. We keep up with each other’s running life through DailyMile as well where we can motivate and encourage each other through our various workouts and runs.

We both follow the Run Like a Mother/Another Mother Runner blog and Facebook page, another tie that connects us. I think I recommended the book to her and now we're both Mother Runners :)

We’ve been virtual run or race buddies a couple of times now, knowing that the other was running the same day. It’s kind of cool that we can send out those running vibes to each other. I know I was sending them out to her during one of her recent races. I love this picture of her (and I hope she doesn't kill me for posting it!). This one is from a Race for the Cure:

We’re planning on being race partners in a couple of weeks for the Insanity Virtual 5K, part of the virtual race series being put on by Moms RUN This Town. Of course, "race partners" is relative in our case. She’ll be in my time zone for once (but not close enough for us to meet up), so we’ll actually run a 5K at the same time, just miles apart! How cool is that?!

But, the pinnacle of our virtual running will be in December when we meet up in Las Vegas to run the Rock’N’Roll Half Marathon down the Strip at night together! It’s going to be amazing! It will be Chandra's first half marathon and my second. These virtual running buddies can't wait to cross that finish line together! And when that happens, I'll post the picture of us running together!