Tuesday, May 3, 2011

1/2 Marathon & Fun Run

I wasn't exactly excited when I woke-up on Saturday morning at 5:00am and it was snowing and we already had 10 inches on the ground. Not what I was expecting but Matt and I got ready and drove down to Thanksgiving Point where luckily there wasn't very much snow. The boys came later with Matt's parents since Kaleb's race wasn't until 9:30.
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We stayed in the car until 6:50 to stay warm as long as possible. There were just over 1,000 people running the 1/2 marathon. Here I am waiting to cross the starting line.

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I started the race keeping a good pace but unfortunately I wasn't prepared for all of the hills there were. My runs are usually pretty flat and because this wound through the golf course and grounds there were a TON of hills, and even the small hills were steep. For the first 6.5 miles I kept my pace running up the hills but it ended up draining my energy quicker than I expected. And even the downhill parts made my knees hurt sooner than they usually do. But even with having to walk here and there I made it through. This is what I should have looked at before I signed up for this 1/2 as my first race. Everyone said how this isn't a race to set a personal record on because it's challenging with the hills but at least I finished it even if I didn't run it as fast as I thought I would have. To give you something to compare it to this is the elevation chart for the Ogden Marathon I signed up for, which I'm hoping to run 1/2 of.


Here are a couple of pictures that the photographers from the race took. This was at mile 2.

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This was mile 5 or 6ish.

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And this was the very end of the race.

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Here's a picture Matt took at the finish.

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It was a difficult course and colder than I had expected (which is why you can see my birthmark on my forehead in most of the pictures) but I had fun and it's amazing to see how much you can do if you can push yourself mentally.

Kaleb ran in the 1-mile kids fun run. He was so excited for his race. I was on the last couple of miles of my race so I didn't get to see him race but Matt, my parents and Matt's parents were there to cheer him on.

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He did really good and was just over 11 minutes and that was with stopping for a cup of powerade at the aid station. He though it was cool that they had a place to grab a drink on the way.

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He wore his medal all day on Saturday.

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Ashton had fun too even if he wasn't running in a race.
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After I finished the boys played on some of the bounce house toys and slides and as we were leaving they called my name from the stage where they were doing awards so I ran back over to claim the prize I won. It was a gift basket with socks, water bottle, an iron man watch, gift certificate and more. What's funny is I forgot to buy a watch before the race and we had looked at Target and I really liked the iron man watches so the night before I made Matt run to Target at 10:30pm and then the next day I won one of them. But Kaleb is enjoying the watch since it's technically an iron kids one.

Kaleb and I had a great time and Matt's even thinking of running the 5K next year!

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