How many times have we gotten to a point in life where we feel we can’t go any further?  Often, the way we make it through those times is through the help and encouragement of a friend.  In this blog, Lara Miller shares her experience about joining Team IOH for the Disney Marathon on January 8, 2012 – and the blessing of becoming friends and running with Nicole.

Lara and Nicole at mile 10, 2012 Disney Marathon

Lara writes:

My Team IOH Experience:

I was introduced to Inheritance of Hope through my boyfriend, Allen Milligan (Deric and Kristen Milligan’s nephew). After meeting Kristen and hearing her story, I thought, what a better organization to support? I started by volunteering to take pictures of Team IOH at the Disney Marathon (2011) where I was instantly inspired by the courage and strength of runners of all ages, shapes and sizes. I didn’t really have a choice after that; I was running a marathon for Team IOH! Next thing I knew, I had registered and started my training. Unfortunately, that came to a halt when the foot doctor presented me with the following options: “worst case scenario is a screw and a cast for about six months, mediocre case is just a cast for about four months, or best case scenario is there is no stress fracture and you will just have to take it easy”. Oh and did I mention I was signed up to volunteer at the NYC retreat in a few weeks?! Lucky for me, I fell in the category of best case scenario.

I was still in a lot of pain and decided to take two months off of training…leaving me with one month to train for a marathon…haha, yeah I laughed at the thought, too. I began training in run-walk intervals to save my body and my foot. I managed to train to where I could run a half marathon comfortably and figured I could just “wing” the rest. HA! That didn’t work out so well.

Lara Miller (in red), Nicole on right, at the Team IOH Pasta dinner

The night before the marathon, we all gathered for the spaghetti dinner where I met another young girl named Nicole Pomerinke who was also running the marathon the next morning. Now, my story doesn’t come close to hers, but I’ll give you a quick glimpse because I think it’s awesome! Nicole is from a very small town in Idaho (they still have square dances across the street, she said) and she had been training to run for about a year and was looking for a group or organization to run for. Long story short, after a few random clicks on the internet, she came upon Inheritance of Hope and the rest is history! She did a bake sale to raise money and then made her first visit to Florida to be a part of Team IOH. I hope she will share her story more, but that is what I gathered from the dinner. We chatted about our training and it turned out that we were expecting to finish the race at the same time! I was so relieved that I would have someone to run with.

The morning of the marathon as I was waiting in my corral, I wasn’t able to find Nicole. I thought, “well this is great…if I can’t find her now while we’re all standing still, how will I find her when we’re all running!?” But…I did! We had a different run-walk pattern so we were back and forth for the first half of the race, but the run was still AMAZING! As miles 15 and 16 came along we would see each other back and forth and slowly began to pick up on each other’s agony. By mile 20 we decided there was no way we could finish the race unless we stuck together for moral support, and so we did just that. We decided walking was just as painful as running so we might as well be running! We ran as much as we could, allowing our bodies to rest here and there, but we (or should I say Nicole) made a plan to run the whole last 1.2 miles.

At that point, I decided Nicole was crazy , lol (not really). I thought to myself “there was no possible way I can run a whole 1.2 miles now…I haven’t ran a full mile straight since the race started!” Nicole told me I didn’t have a choice and so I began to mentally prepare. When we saw mile marker 25, we looked at each other and said “here we go!” and then we were off (now don’t think we’re running fast…cause we’re not). The crowd was so motivating and kept us going and then…I saw the finish line! I was immediately filled with emotion and awe and “OMG I just ran 26 miles!?” We really took off at this point and sprinted across the finish line side-by-side representing Team IOH.

I’m not sure I would have finished without Nicole and I guess this is just another example to show that God has a plan for everything.

Caroline at Cinderella’s Castle

On a side note, Lara didn’t know that she was a tremendous encouragement and blessing to another Team IOH runner, Caroline, before the marathon began. Caroline wrote to me, “Before the race I sort of just wandered aimlessly around in the dark. But then…as God always does…he provided for me and ran me smack into a fellow Team IOH runner. Finding Lara in that sea of people was just wonderful. We walked together to the starting line and swapped stories and hugs before we parted ways. It was just a wonderful reminder of how IOH continues to touch my life.”