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Hometown

Los Angeles

Joie de VIVre

Running, cooking, baking, family and friends, skiing, hiking and traveling.

VIV Moment

I was the kid whose mom said, “Jessica, please go run around the block.” Yet I didn’t start running until high school. I was a competitive swimmer and got hurt while training for state finals my senior year. In order to stay in shape for the competition, I began running. It stuck. I was hooked and kept it up.

I decided to set a goal and run a marathon. I began training with two of my friends (who both ended up dropping out three months before the marathon, leaving me to train by myself). I made sure to do my short runs during the week and my long runs on Saturdays.

Every Saturday morning leading up to the marathon, I would say good-bye to my husband and go run for 2 to 3 hours alone with my iPod. To this day I am not sure how I did this by myself! But the alone time was valuable and extremely beneficial.

The week before the 2006 Los Angeles Marathon, although I knew I was ready, I was incredibly nervous. I didn’t want to do run it alone. When I went to the expo the Friday night before the Marathon, all of my fears disappeared and I was excited.The morning of the race, I found a friend from high school who also was running the Marathon. I will never forget the excitement I felt while standing with her and all the runners at the starting line.

The gun went off and we started to run. The shuffling of everyone’s feet was an unbelievable sound. I have never felt more motivated to run. I was fine until the last three miles of the race. I was on my way to my best time, but my quads locked up and I had to slow my pace down. There was no way I was going to stop. I remember seeing my dad at the finish line and he was yelling “Jess, just keep going! You’re so close!” I swore someone was pushing the finish line farther away from me, but I managed to cross it. I completed the marathon in 4 hours and 21 minutes.

I have had many accomplishments — being accepted into my first choice college and business school, and getting married. This was different though. This was all me. Running the 2006 Los Angeles Marathon was truly the most incredible thing I have ever done.

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