Sometimes I like to joke that my birthday should be a national holiday.

That’s because I love celebrating my birthday. Partying. Cakes. Gifts. Friends. I like to do something different every year and really celebrate. Usually I take the whole week off because often I am lucky enough for my birthday to fall the week of Labor Day, so, I get a paid day off and only have to take four vacation days.

Brilliant, right?

This year my birthday, thanks to it being a leap year, fell on a Saturday.

Since 2009 I have to say my birthdays have been far more low key than in the past. That year I was pregnant and since then my focus has shifted dramatically from celebrating how awesome I am to how awesome my daughter is so I’ve brought it all down a notch.

This year I didn’t take the week off. And this year I had a totally different focus for the weekend of my birthday. The day after was the Wings of Karen 5K Bra Dash and I signed up to walk the inaugural event.

Having lived in Maple Valley for more than eight years now, I have come to develop a real affection for the service-oriented attitude of this community, and I love that I live somewhere people give back.

The Bra Dash was a tremendous example of what an amazing community Maple Valley is and has become over the years.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit here.

Back in late June I started walking my dog after my older beagle was put to sleep following a diagnosis of advanced lymphoma. I was heartbroken.

A few days after my dog’s death, I had lunch with my good friend Ilyse, who is already pretty awesome anyway but is also a breast cancer survivor. During lunch she was telling me about her plans to run the Torchlight 8K at the end of July. She challenged me to walk it. Considering I hadn’t actually started walking my other beagle yet, I wasn’t sure I could do an 8K, which is about five miles, in little more than a month.

About two weeks later Victoria Laise Jonas posted a comment on my Facebook profile about how she had just signed up to walk the Bra Dash. Wings of Karen, by the way, is a Maple Valley-based non-profit. The event was planned for Sept. 9, the day after I turned 34, and I thought that was a good way to celebrate that weekend.

I posted a link to the event on Ilyse’s Facebook profile. She said if I signed up then she would, too. It would be perfect timing because it fell just about six weeks after her final reconstructive surgery. Ilyse is a runner. I am so not a runner. In high school when we had to do a mile run in P.E. I did everything I could to get out of it. When I played soccer, I would wonder what possessed me to play a sport that required so much running over such a long period of time.

But, I decided to start training to walk the 5K. I signed up for it and so did Ilyse.

During the three weeks leading up to the event, we met up to walk, and each time we went four miles. The first time we walked, it was Aug. 17, a Friday when I was off work. It was 93 degrees that afternoon. I pushed my daughter in the jogging stroller, well halfway, Ilyse pushed the stroller on the way back. Maybe we were a little bit crazy to do that but we stayed hydrated and it really felt awesome.

Then I met up with Ilyse in her hilly neighborhood the following week. It was 20 degrees cooler. And since I had been walking a fairly flat route around my house in Maple Valley, the hills kicked my butt.

A week later Ilyse brought her oldest, Shayna who is 11, to my house and we walked another four miles. It wasn’t terribly fast but it was fun and we walked up the short but steep hill near my house. Ilyse pushed Lyla in the stroller up the hill. She has been antsy to get out and run so she wanted the challenge.

The following week we both did walks in our respective neighborhoods on our own.

On the morning of the event, Ilyse came to my house and we all got in my Jeep — Jason, my husband, my daughter, and Ilyse — which then refused to start. That’s another story for another time. We pulled Lyla’s car seat out, put it in Ilyse’s mini van and off we went to Lake Wilderness Elementary where we got on the Seattle Party Limo shuttle which took us to Lake Wilderness Park.

When we arrived, there were hundreds and hundreds of people of all ages, shapes and sizes, families, the Tahoma High School girls soccer team including coach Jason Johnson with his adorable almost-one-year-old daughter Charlotte strapped to his chest in a baby carrier.

There were Tahoma cheerleaders and volunteers handling registration, taking raffle tickets, handing out water and protein bars, or leading a group in a Zumba warm up.

Jason took Lyla to the playground while we waited to start the event.

Around 9 a.m. the survivors in the crowd were asked to come up to the stage to be recognized. Ilyse went up and honestly, I got a little choked up. As I told my friends on Facebook, Ilyse has been challenging me to meet my potential since I was a junior in high school and I was in her seventh period algebra 3/4 class after I was bumped out of algebra-trignometry (these days it’s called pre-calculus) because I was failing. At that point midway through the first semester I think I was failing math and was despondent. I believe I pulled my grade up to a C then earned a B second semester.

Ilyse has always believed in me. The thought that breast cancer could take someone so important to me made me angry. And scared. I can’t even imagine how her family must have felt.

So. Yeah. It was an emotional moment. Then I got my act together and shortly thereafter we went to the back of the group. Runners in front and we moved to the very back. We probably should have been in the middle of the pack. I told Ilyse I wanted to walk in under an hour, preferably an 18-minute mile pace. As we started, I just was so pleased at the huge turnout, at the spirit of the community I live in.

Then I was a bit annoyed with the huge crowd because I wanted to walk fast.

Ilyse is an expert in challenging me and pushing me to do my best. Through the whole walk she asked how I was doing, reminded me to breathe through my nose then out my mouth, counted steps up the hills which were still tough for me and was like my own personal coach during the event.

And she’s the breast cancer survivor.

We even ran a few times because I plan to walk at least one more 5K — I’ve signed up for the Issaquah Run Sept. 30 — then I’m going to start the Couch to 5K running training program.

At the end, as the finish line was in sight, we were making good time and hustling. We ran the last 100 yards across the finish line and as we approached I saw Jason and Lyla waiting for.

When we finished, according to Ilyse’s awesome Garmin watch, we had completed the 5K in 55 minutes, 30 seconds, with an average mile time of 17:38. I was thrilled. Ilyse and I high fived as we finished.

As I walked up to my daughter and husband, I was overwhelmed with emotion about what I had just done, but I swallowed it and Lyla up for a hug.

I did it. I walked my first 5K. Never in my life had I ever aspired to do something like this. It was something I thought other, fitter, more ambitious people do.

One thing I have learned is that I am one of those other people if I want to be, I can be fitter, more ambitious.

I’ve also discovered how much support I have from my friends as I trained for the event and posted my progress on Facebook. People worry about me, about my health. It’s kind of amazing to see the kind of friends I have at this stage in my life.

There have also been some nice benefits that I knew could happen but wasn’t focused on. For example, I’ve lost weight in training, enough that I had to get rid of all my shirts and go down a size. I’m pretty sure I’m going to need to get new pants soon. And a new winter jacket. What was important was that I was focused on training for the event, not losing weight, so thinking like an athlete helped me. I wasn’t depriving myself when I cut out pasta and pizza and beer and donuts, I was putting the right fuel in my body.

After the walk I celebrated my birthday with a low key dinner at my in-law’s house. I had pizza, one Blue Moon and birthday cake. I got almost enough Amazon gift cards to get a new jogging stroller which I’m going to need to keep training. I need a 5K run to train for in January or February. Who knows where I will be as far as my health goes by then but I imagine it can only continue to get better.

And at the same time I was part of something bigger than myself. Ilyse’s road back to running after breast cancer which will eventually lead to another marathon next fall. A larger effort to raise money for breast cancer research thanks to the Bra Dash and Wings of Karen. This event drew more than 600 participants which is amazing for a first event and a new non-profit. And this community of Maple Valley that I live in proved yet again how amazing it is, what one person’s vision can become her in this city.

I’m not sure what’s happened to me in the past few months but now I know what Ilyse has always seen in me: the ability to rise to the challenge.

The day after I turned 34 I rose to one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced and felt like a rock star afterward.

Happy birthday to me! Here’s to many more 5Ks around my birthday in the future.