provo river 1/2 marathon

the first week we moved back to EM i ran into my old running buddy and we scheduled to start running together again. we did this through all of may, usually running 3-4 miles a night. around the first of june we did a practice run for our neighborhood 5K, the gals we went with were fast.... and so we heard tales of a half marathon from them. needless to say, i thought "i could do that."

valerie and i immediately started training for the provo river 1/2 marathon. 10 weeks later, the furthest we had ran was 11 miles, and we were averaging 20-25 miles a week in training. we had a pretty good pace, not fast by any means, but not slow. we were both feeling very confident in the 13.1 miles that awaited us.

the race was nearly fun, it started out with us meeting at the riverbottoms in provo at 5AM. it was dark and cold, and crazy crowded. finally we were able to load a bus, and we were bussed up to vivian park, and then all the way up south fork (according to maui) where we then dumped off in this big open field with hundreds and hundreds of people. another hour or so of waiting in the colding morning mountain air, the race finally started a little after 7. we ended up in the back of the crowd, with about 3/4 of the runners in front of us. this was all good, i think it felt less intense knowing there were not hords of people passing us, because they were already in the front.


i am so happy i had valerie to run with, otherwise i would have probably given up and did some walking. with her motivation we were able to run the whole way!

2 hours 26 minutes later, we finished our run, and we ended up back at the movie theater parking lot, were it all started. it did feel really good to finish it, and like a big accomplishment. however i did not experience a "runners high" or anything of the such. all i could think was that we were finally done, and we could cut back on the running- no more sore knees, aching feet, etc... i am not itching to do another race- that is for sure.