On Feb. 28, cross-country coach Rachael Edwards and sophomore Catherine Long competed in the Greenville Half Marathon.

Edwards started preparing for the half-marathon in November and said she trained slowly and steadily.

Unfortunately, Edwards caught the flu one week before the race. Despite not feeling her best, she still competed.

“I was really proud of myself when I got done,” Edwards said.

She said she entered the race to prove a point to herself.

“I wanted to do something hard to prove to myself that I can do it,” she said. “We can do hard things. Everybody can.”

Edwards said she did not just run the half-marathon for herself, but also for her students.

“I wanted to be able to show them that they could do things, and it actually works,” she said. “I did this because I was able to do this, and now you can do this.”

Edwards said she is very proud of her students.

“Catherine came zooming by me at mile 9, just with a smile on her face,” she said.

Long said she wanted to try something new to challenge herself mentally and ended up enjoying it.

“It challenged me mentally, which will help a lot with track and cross country because running is mostly a mental sport,” she said. “It helped a lot with my endurance.”

Long said she also plans to continue long-distance running and hopes to run a marathon in the future.

She placed third in her age group with a final time of 1:59:47.