It still was pitch black outside when my alarm went off. "Thank God," I sighed as I sat up and grabbed my phone from the nightstand to turn it off. I tossed and turned most of the night trying to will myself to sleep, and I was relieved this horrible endless night was finally over. I hung my long legs over the side of the bed, wondering yet again what possessed me to sign up for a half marathon. The last three months had been a brutal unending cycle of long runs that just kept getting longer and longer. I had followed my training plan as closely as my busy schedule allowed, but whether I was really ready or not was totally up in the air. A flutter of fear flowed through me as I thought about more than thirteen miles of running.

I heard a soft chirping sound and glanced over to the other side of the bed. George, my massive gray tabby Maine coon cat, was lying on the bed staring at me with huge chartreuse eyes. I swear he looked like he was trying to figure out why we were awake right now. I reached over and scratched the thick ruff of fur on his chest.

"This seemed like a good idea three months ago, baby boy," I told him as he rolled onto his back, so I could scratch his furry belly. He continued chirping as I petted him a few more times. Then there was a knock on the door. "What the hell?" I grumbled as I looked at the clock on my phone again. Maggie was early, and I hadn't even gotten dressed yet. I got up to stumble out of my room in my pajamas, leaving George to go back to sleep, and went to answer the door.

Maggie was grinning from ear to ear, her hazel eyes gleaming with excitement when I opened the door. "I brought bagels and coffee," she announced. She held up a bag in one hand and a cup holder with two coffees in the other. I took the cup holder from her and stepped back to let her enter my apartment. She looked adorable. Her chin-length dark bob was in a French braid, and she was wearing an unzipped black hoodie over a slim-fitting aqua blue long-sleeve shirt. Her black running tights hugged her toned shapely legs. Her outfit highlighted every voluptuous curve of her body.

"Remind me why we're doing this again?" I asked her as I carried the bagels over to the nearby dining table.

"Because we are bad-ass women who can do anything we set our minds to," she explained, her grin widening. She was always on the look out for something crazy for us to do. She already sucked me into zip-lining and bungee jumping. She was going to be the death of me, but she was my best friend, and I'd do anything for her.

"We'll see how bad-ass we feel after thirteen miles," I said and shook my head at her. "I'm kind of freaking out about it, aren't you?" A flutter of fear rippled through me, my stomach getting queasy.

"Hey," Maggie said reassuringly as she set the bagels down on the table, "you'll be fine. We're in this together. Remember?"

"Aren't you even a little nervous?" I asked her in exasperation as we sat down to eat.

"Of course, I'm nervous," she answered with a wry smile. "I just hide it better than you."

"I'm not sure I should even try to eat anything," I told her as I pulled a bagel out and stared at it. I was starting to think I might throw up.

"Just eat, Nat." She put her hand on mine. "You'll feel better if you do."

"Alright," I conceded reluctantly, knowing I needed to fuel up for the race anyway. "But if I throw up, I'm doing it on you."

"I'd think that was an empty threat if you hadn't already barfed on me before," Maggie said with a laugh, her eyes lit up with amusement.

"You're never going to let me forget about that are you?" I asked her as I laughed. Evidently, I wasn't ever going to live down that one crazy drunk night in college.

"Nope," she answered with a shit-eating grin. "Now eat," she told me as she handed me a small container of peanut butter.

His Majesty, Sir George, sauntered across the hardwood floor into the room and announced his arrival with soft meows. He slammed all twenty-five pounds of himself against my leg then put his front paws on my thigh.

"Are you sure that's a cat and not a small lion?" Maggie asked as George begged loudly and shamelessly for a bite of my bagel. I tore a piece off and gave it to him, telling him what a good boy he was.

"It's really nice that George lets you live here with him," Maggie said with a snort. "He gets a full-time chef, a maid, and a butler. He is so spoiled that I'm kind of jealous."

"Don't you listen to her," I told George as I fed him some more bagel. "I'm in charge here. Right, baby boy?" I swear he had a dubious expression on his face. George moved on to Maggie when I was done feeding him. I noticed that he had her wrapped around his paw too as she started feeding him some of her breakfast.

After a few bites, my stomach started to settle down, and by the time I had finished eating and drank half my coffee the nausea was gone. We stood up from the table, and Maggie followed me into my bedroom when I went to get dressed. She started telling me about the disastrous blind date she had the other night. I had warned her not to do it, but when Maggie was determined to do something there was usually no convincing her otherwise.

I put on a black long-sleeve shirt and I red zip-up hoodie then paired them with my long boot-cut running pants. I looked in the mirror on the closet door and was pleased with what I saw. I had always been tall and on the skinny side, so running had given my legs some tone and definition that I hadn't had before last year. My ass had benefited too. Not that I didn't have a nice backside to start with, but the running had made it tighter, and I think curvier. I could use all the curves I could get, especially if I compared myself to Maggie's curvaceous body. My saving grace was that I was blessed with decent-sized breasts and a narrow waist that gave me a feminine silhouette.

"You look great," Maggie announced from where she was sitting on the bed behind me. "Want me to braid your hair? I could do a fishtail braid?"

"That'd be awesome," I answered with a grateful smile. My thick light-brown hair was a hot mess right now from tossing and turning all night. I wasn't really feeling up to dealing with it myself.

I sat down on the bed, and Maggie climbed up behind me and went to work. It had always astounded me how quickly she could braid my hair or her own. It always took me forever. Within a few minutes, my hair was braided into a long tail down my back. I checked the mirror again and nodded my approval.

We spent the next several minutes pinning our racing bibs onto our shirts with the occasional curse as one of us stabbed ourselves with one of the safety pins. Then it was time to leave and that nervous nauseous feeling came over me again.

"I have a confession to make," Maggie suddenly said with a serious expression. "I'm feeling a little sick now myself."

"Are you going to throw up on me to get even?" I asked her with a smile.

"I'm thinking about it."

"Just to warn you," I said as I pointed at her with narrowed eyes, "I'm a chain barfer."

"I guess we'll have to save it and barf on strangers during the race."

"I like the way you think." I smiled. We both took turns in the bathroom, then I slipped on my running shoes, and we were ready to go. I walked out of my room with Maggie close behind. There was no backing out now. I hoped my determination was enough to get me through this if my body decided it wasn't going to cooperate. I didn't want to consider that I might not finish this race.

"Ready?" Maggie asked as she watched me standing near the table with what I was sure was a panicked expression on my face.

"Let's do it," I said with a determination that I wasn't certain was even real, and I followed her out of my apartment, hoping to return in triumph with a medal around my neck.

**********

Running is mostly a solitary sport. You pound out the miles alone, lost in the rhythmic repetition of putting one foot in front of the other. It let you shut your brain off and just focus on the here and now. I loved the break from my constantly whirring mind that running gave me. It was like meditation for me, and I always felt calm and centered after a run. It was the only exercise I enjoyed.

An organized race like this was one of the few times a runner got to feel like they weren't alone in their love of the sport. You got to feel like a part of a larger whole that was the running community. I loved it. I had done a few 5Ks with Maggie, and I usually loved the excitement before a race began. I didn't even mind the nerves and jitters, but today was on a whole new level. Add to that the stress of trying to find a place to park and having to walk several blocks to get to our starting corral on time, and I was a nervous wreck.

This was the biggest race our town put on every year on the first Saturday of October. Last year, I had done the 5K so I had run in a large crowd like this before, but the sheer magnitude of running over thirteen miles was really freaking me out. The people massed around us in our starting corral stretching and moving about were making me a little claustrophobic. I was feeling a little panicky.

"Nat." Maggie spoke my name and broke me out of my own head. "You need to chill out. We'll be fine."

I took in a deep breath and let it out in a rush. "Right. We can do this. We trained and we're ready," I told Maggie, but mostly I was telling myself.

"Exactly." Maggie nodded with a nervous smile. I was pleased to see her calm exterior was cracking a little. It made me feel a little better about being freaked out.

I could hear the announcer talking at the starting line, but we were so far back that the words were a jumbled mess through the megaphone they were using. An electric energy traveled through the crowd in a wave as the start time swiftly approached and my nerves skyrocketed with a surge of adrenaline. A few moments later, the crowd began counting down to the start. Maggie and I joined in with a shared smile of excitement. This was it.

A bullhorn sounded from the starting line after we counted down to one. It took a few minutes before we actually started moving forward. We walked as we were carried along with the crowd to the starting line. Then we were suddenly under the starting gate, and we picked up our pace into an easy jog. We had to pace ourselves, so we had enough energy to finish the race. I was suddenly exhilarated, the nerves fading away as we finally started to run. This was what we'd been striving for the last few months, and now it was time to prove to ourselves that we could do this.

The first few miles were easy with the crowd around us acted as a distraction and an incentive, but as the crowd began to thin out, it got even harder as our bodies began to realize they had to work for this. Maggie started her usual banter of observations about the people around us, most of them hilarious. I don't know how she managed to talk during runs, but thankfully she never seemed bothered by my silence. She pretty much had a conversation with herself, and I nodded along smiling as we slogged on through mile after mile.

At the halfway point, Maggie finally lapsed into silence as it took all of our attention just to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I glanced over to see the look of utter concentration on her face, and I imagined I had a similar look on mine.

"This hill can suck it," she breathed out somewhere around the eight-mile point as we struggled up a steep hill on the street we were running on. I nodded in agreement, my legs burning as I picked my knees up higher with every step. I sucked in air through my mouth and huffed it out over and over, trying to get more oxygen to my poor leg muscles. I was starting to ache in multiple places, but I kept going knowing this was part of doing a long race like this, and most of them would fade away as I kept running. It was a huge relief when we finally crested the hill, and the road leveled off. My legs were grateful for the reprieve.

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