Schultz Strong

Meet a very small part of my family.  I'm 4th of 10 kids and happen to be right between these two.  Sherry is 2 years older than me and Danny is 2 years younger than me.  Growing up between these two was never easy but it definitely changed who I became.  Sherry is the most disciplined person I know.  When she wants something she works hard and gets it - every time.  There is nothing she can't do. Being her little sister meant I had to work really hard to be second place.  Then you throw Danny in the mix.  I was older than him so I should have had a bit of an edge when we were little - but not with this guy.  He is fiercely competitive and very strong.  He was always the same size or bigger than me and could do anything I could do better - even when he was 3 and I was 5.  So having Sherry lead the way and Danny right on my tail forced me to push harder than I ever wanted to.  But I didn't want to get left behind so I did what they did to the best of my own ability.  I never minded them being faster or better than me I just wanted to be close enough to them to be a part of the fun.

So last year when they both ran the STG marathon and qualified for Boston I decided that I didn't want to be left behind this time either.  So I set my sights on working hard to qualify.  This year all 3 of ran this race and qualified.  What a feeling.  It took some coaxing but we got Danny to sign up and now the 3 of us are going to Boston in April.  

Danny ran the race with a horrible head cold and even though he didn't get his goal (3 hour marathon) he kicked trash and finished in 3:07.  He amazes me with his strength and the fact that he trained so hard and ran as an "elite".  Pretty cool in my book.

Sherry injured her foot a few months ago and hasn't run in 5 weeks.  The longest training run she did before the marathon was 15 miles (and that was like 6 weeks ago).  She was just going to go out there and see how it felt.  We were together for 16 miles and every mile she was so happy that she could run and counted each mile as a blessing.  Even injured she ran in 3:44:56 and qualified for Boston.  Amazing.  I'm a brat though and kept rubbing in the fact that I beat her. Something I've only done twice in my entire life and the last time was my freshman year in high school at a track meet when she had a really bad sprained ankle. 

I admire these two and love them both so much.  Thanks for motivating me to be tougher than I want to be and making me dream big.