I Ran

I ran a half marathon June 8th.  I was forced to do it.  My older brother is an awesome runner and after one of the 5k races that I did with him about a year ago (okay, HE ran the half marathon while I just did the 5k), I half jokingly said how great I felt and that I should run a half marathon one day.  Well, he held me to it and was very encouraging in my quest. So he made me do it.  I guess deep down I’m that little kid sister that wants to do cool things just to impress her older brother.  Every Saturday when my runs would last about two hours, I wanted to quit.  I got so tired of going to the gym  at night as soon as the boys went down to sleep and spending my free time there instead of sitting in front of the tv.  I hated seeing how slow I was and discouraged when I didn’t see results happen as fast as I wanted.  But every time I talked to my brother about it and asked him questions about fueling for long runs or how to get my speed up, or told him about my discouraging runs, he kept me going.  Thanks big bro!

The race was down in Provo.   Because Provo is about an hour from our house, I decided to get a hotel so I didn’t have to wake up any earlier than I was already going to have to. Devin had a doctor dinner up in Midway on Friday evening and spouses were invited so we went to that on Friday and then spent the night in Provo.  I did not sleep. at. all.  Okay, maybe 20 min here and there, but I was so nervous because of the starting time for my race….not my actual race!  Lame.  When my alarm went off at 3:45 (yes. 3:45 am) I was a complete wreck of nerves.  I had to drive to the mall and catch a shuttle bus that took all the runners up Provo Canyon to the starting line.  By the time I got up to the starting line, it was 4:40am.  What the?! Who planned this?  The race didn’t start until 6:00!  So there we all sat, in the cold and dark, huddled next to fire pits that were set up in the middle of the highway.  They only had one large light post set up by the starting line and the fires were started with lighter fluid which made them extremely smokey.  But there I sat for an 1 hour and 20 min waiting for the race to begin.  It was a gorgeous place to run through and for the first 9 miles I felt awesome and was running faster than I ever had before.  Every once in a while I heard rustling in the leaves and thought it was a wild animal in the forest out to get me, but then it’d turn out to be a runner that had to “go” in the bushes because they had ZERO bathrooms along the 13.1 mile route!  That was pretty bad.  Luckily, I was fine the whole time and was having a great run. But then BAM! It hit me and I struggled for the last 4 miles.  BUT, I did end up finishing faster than I had ever run before and beat my goal time by 4 minutes so I was extremely happy with that!  The only thing that kept me going was knowing that Dev was waiting for me somewhere near the finish line so I was running in anticipation of that.  About 1/4 of a mile to the finish line, there he was!
Maybe it’s just the picture but I thought I was running.  Or maybe I was so delusional at this point that I thought I was running but I was really just speed walking…. 


And here’s me and my medal…that was hanging in the kitchen for all to see until a few weeks ago.  And now it’s dangling on our bedroom window, just to remind Devin how I’m so cool…. :)

And just to remember how cute my boys are: