Runaway bride-to-be proposed to during last year’s half marathon

Leah Vazquez isn’t exactly a runaway bride-to-be, but she does have the running part down. When scheduling her wedding day, she made sure to carve out some time for a run.

“That morning, my bridesmaids and I have time to go for a short run to just relax and calm down,” said Vazquez, a 28-year-old Olympia resident.

That run in Shelton, coming up July 16, might give Vazquez a few minutes to remember a different run — the one that foreshadowed her upcoming wedding day.

During last year’s Capital City Half Marathon, Vazquez was running up the Eastside St. hill — around Mile No. 10 — when she saw a cardboard sign with her name written on it.

“I was like, ‘Oh, cool! Somebody else named Leah!,’ ” Vazquez said. “Then I started reading the rest of the sign, and his sign said, ‘Leah, wanna get hitched?’

“As soon as I read the rest of the sign, I looked up and saw that it was him. I stopped running immediately and just started crying.”

Caleb Dobey, Vazquez’s fiancé, had biked to the top of the hill to pop the question. He said he’d thought about the proposal for a while, and he wanted to do something unique.

“I didn’t really want a lot of attention, so I went to a secluded area at the top of the biggest hill in the race,” he said. “There was really no one there, so she just saw it when she got to the top of the hill.

“She did seem surprised. I don’t think she saw that coming.”

Not at all.

“I walked over to him and I remember thinking, ‘I have to remember to say yes,’ ” Vazquez said. “Like, don’t just hug him and go on. I had to remember, ‘Say yes.’ ”

About two minutes later, she continued down the Capital City course, suddenly a future bride.

“She wanted to stay longer, but I told her to go because she had to finish her race,” Dobey said.

“A true runner’s boyfriend,” Vazquez added.

The ring came later, but Dobey did send Vazquez along with a token.

“I had some snacks for her,” he said. “I had some raisins, because they’re full of sugar and easy to eat. So I gave her a bag of raisins.”

Vazquez went on to finish the race with a personal-best time of 1 hour, 57 minutes, 14 seconds.

“For probably the next mile, I was crying, and I was trying to PR, but I was like, ‘I don’t even care about my time anymore, I just got engaged, this is the best race ever,’ ” Vazquez said.

“After another mile, I looked at my watch and was like, ‘Oh, I could still PR.’ Then I decided, ‘How cool would that be to PR and get engaged in the same race?’ So, I really turned it on, and I got it.”

This year will be Vazquez’s fourth time running the Capital City Half Marathon, and her ninth half marathon overall. As of Thursday, nearly 1,200 participants have registered for the half marathon, and nearly 500 for the 5-mile run.

This story was originally published May 12, 2016 at 5:36 PM with the headline "Runaway bride-to-be proposed to during last year’s half marathon."