Half Marathon!

If you haven't noticed the countdown to the right... it says hooray! I ran the Provo City Half Marathon race on Saturday! The drive down to Utah was scary and frustrating. Our portable DVD player died on us and if any of you have traveled with kids you know what a life saver that can be. We also hit a blizzard near Snowville... our favorite place! We made it to Utah finally and the fun began.

The whole week before the race I was dealing with shin splints again. I was worried that I would even be able to run at all. So the night before I asked Andy to give me a blessing. After my blessing I felt a little more calm, but not restless. During the night I had several dreams that something would go wrong... mostly being late and forgetting to pick up Shiloam and Angela. In the morning I still was debating on what to wear because we heard there was a 40% chance it would snow. I decided to wear pretty much everything I brought and I would take off layers if I needed to. Uh, yeah, it was snowing a lot when we got outside! We picked up the girls and were early for the race.

My group included my sister, Shiloam, my girlfriend, Angela, and myself. Along the way we picked up two other girls. One girl, Liz, was actually neighbors with Shiloam about 6 years ago and they hadn't seen each other since. Another girl, Morilla, was right in front of us most of the way and we started chatting with her. This was my first race ever and it turned out to be really fun! Even with the snow, wind, and 30 degree weather! I was very bundled and stayed warm for most of it. (2 pairs of pants, 3 shirts, a jacket, gloves, visor, and 2 headbands!)

Some of the best things about the race:

-Andy, John, and Cindy were at the water stations every two miles to cheer us on!
-Angela traveled all the way from Idaho to run with me!
-Our hubbies totally supported us in our training, and race!
-Shiloam didn't bail on us and stuck with us the whole way!
-We RAN the whole race!
-No shin splint pain whatsoever! At least not on race day!
-I didn't have to use any kind of energy gels! They are so gross!
-We finished before Mohawk dude! He was the guy that Andy, John, and Cindy would look for to see when we were coming up. We were behind him by about a minute until the last leg and then we passed him.
-Passing a lot of people at the end!
-We finished in about 20 minutes shorter than we expected!
-Shiloam, Angela, and I crossed the finish line holding hands!
-Andy, John, Bryce (and Brenton), Cindy, and Emily were cheering us on at the finish line with roses for all of us!
-I can now say I've run a half marathon, and I have a shirt to prove it!!!


Some of the bad things about the race:
-Seeing girls pull their pants down and take a dump because they don't want to wait for an available potty.
-A ton of people passing us!
-Feeling out of energy and not finding stuff to talk about (off the top of our heads) to get our minds off the kill.
-My legs are super sore!
-Now Angela and I have to get back to normal life! Maybe we'll train for something else so we can keep running together without getting flack from our hubbies... hmm!


Thanks to all of my supporters! It was fun to talk to you and take your encouraging energy with us to the race. Thanks to our hubbies who supported us and watched the kids many days and nights so that we could run. Thanks to our groupies who cheered us on every two miles! That was seriously one of the best things about the race! They missed the 12 mile water station to go and get the roses and we were totally bummed... until we saw the roses. Thanks to the girls that stuck with me on the race and didn't leave me in the dust. And most of all, thanks to Angela! She stuck with me through the training and has become such a great friend. She helped me learn to love running! When I run with her I find my troubles disappear and I am a much happier person all together. I totally love that fabulous girl!!! I think she and I will be friends for eternity! I love you tons, Angela!

Our official time was 2:27:04! Our overall place was 482 out of 561! I know we are slow for some people but we didn't really care about that. We just wanted to finish in under 3 hours and actually run the whole thing. We did it!!! Another really cool thing... In our training we ran over 200 miles! How awesome is that!?!

If you want to see other perspectives go to Cindy's blog or if you've been invited to Shiloam's blog you can check out her thoughts, too... as soon as she posts.