Published: May 16, 2008 10:33 pm            

Off and running

Waco Elementary trio finish mini-marathon

WACO — Since November, when the buses pulled away from Waco Elementary, three staff members hit the road running toward a unified goal.

Jeanne Caldwell, Jennifer Martin and Ragan Knuckles recently met that goal by completing a 13.1-mile Kentucky Derby Festival mini-marathon in Louisville.

“At first, I really didn’t believe I could do it,” said Martin, a Title I aide at the school. “I just thought I would say I could do this and if I can’t, I’m not going to beat myself up about it.

“Jeanne kept saying that if you can run six miles, you can run seven,” she said. “If you can run eight, you can run nine. That’s really how we got through it. It was a phenomenal experience.”

Knuckles, a physical education teacher, said she first started running with Caldwell and Martin simply just to exercise with her colleagues.

“I had no goal of running a mini-marathon,” she said. “I didn’t think I could do it. It took me a long time to commit to it. About half way through (training), I thought, ‘Hey, I think I can do this.’”

Caldwell, a full-time substitute at the school, was no stranger to running long distances.

She encouraged Knuckles and Martin to join her this year after running the Louisville mini-marathon in 2006.

“I trained by myself and ran it all by myself before,” she said. “Ragan and another teacher went with me, but they stayed in the room.”

“It was just more fun to do it with friends,” Caldwell said. “It was easier because we had that accountability with each other. It was easier to train.”

Knowing firsthand the busy schedules of school employees and realizing the hard work and dedication it took to accomplish, Caldwell said Knuckles and Martin really made an impression.

“The other two girls were very inspiring to me even though I had done it before,” she said. “Jennifer’s going to school full time at Eastern. She’s working full time and she’s got three children.”

The trio started running together after school in November, starting with two miles and adding mileage each week.

In February, they began author and champion runner Hal Higdon’s mini-marathon training program by running three days per week after school and meeting once on the weekends for a long run.

“I probably had the hardest time training,” Martin said. “Your body can physically do it, but you mentally start telling yourself that it’s OK to stop.”

“I would hit a wall at about eight miles during my long-run training,” she said. “It really worried me for the race because I thought I was going to hit this wall and we still have all these miles to go. But, it was different on race day.”

Having each other to lean on and motivate one another made it easier to get through any inclement weather during their Waco Loop running route during training, Caldwell said.

“We ran in the rain. We ran in the snow. We had to avoid some lightning and thunder,” she said. “People would say, ‘You’re crazy running in the rain.’ We just told them that if it rained that day (of the race) we’re still running no matter what.”

“Some of the kids from school who live up the road would yell at us or wave to us,” Caldwell said. “When the school buses passed by they would clap or cheer at us. I think the kids were very encouraging.”

The women hit the 10-mile mark in their training the weekend before the race.

“Jeanne literally was our running coach,” Knuckles said. “She was the motivator. If you ever got down on yourself or thought you couldn’t do it, she was always there to lift you up and push you. She pushed both of us farther than I think we thought we could go.”

Knuckles nearly had to miss the race after getting sick days before the mini-marathon.

“On the Thursday before the race, I had to be driven home,” she said. “I left school puking from a stomach virus. I was sick the entire night. Friday, I didn’t come into work until about noon. So, everyone was so worried and crying because we had trained since November.”

However, Knuckles said she “just hydrated really well” and went forward with the race.

Martin, who said she saw completing the run as a personal goal of persevering through something she originally did not think she could accomplish, shed tears a few times while running.

“I had never ran passed the 10-mile mark before so when I did I started to cry because I felt great,” she said. “It was the first time that I felt incredible like I could run the full marathon.”

The trio ran the entire 13.1 miles side by side, locking arms and sprinting when they made the last turn toward the finish line.

They came across the finish line together hand in hand.

“It got a little emotional,” Knuckles said. “At the end, my husband showed up with my four children and my mother-in-law and surprised us. We all cried when we saw them. It was really neat.”

After recovering physically and mentally from the race, the three Waco women have put their tennis shoes back on with plans to run in some shorter races around the area and possibly run another mini-marathon in the fall.

“I told a student the other day that they were going to remember these ladies doing this some time or another down the road and that it’s important to stay in shape,” said Caldwell, adding that hopefully the trio are an inspiration to students.

Running has really become a lifestyle now, Martin said.

“I think at first we just kind of wanted to look good,” she said. “The weight loss is a great bonus. It got to be so beyond that superficial, ‘I dropped 10 pounds and I can still eat like a linebacker’ to really accomplishing something for us.”

“It’s really amazing what your body can really do if you tell your head this is how it’s going to be.”

        

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