Moab Half Marathon!!!

It was Emily's fault, really.  She got Jane excited about running the Moab Half.  Then she got me excited about running it.  Then I told my sisters they should run it.  Then BAM, we had our team!  We were Running Scared!  (That was our team name)  I was kind of nervous about it since the most I had ever run in my life was 5 miles.  Once.  And it was awful.  A little girl passed me, I mean seriously!  So I actually trained for this race...and it was AWESOME!!!  My goal was to run 10 minutes miles, which I did!  (ok, it was just over 10 minute miles, but we had a strong headwind for most of the race, so I'm counting it!). I finished in 2 hours 16 minutes!  Which sounds like forever.  And it kind of is.  But for my first half marathon, plus hauling around the bun in my oven, I'm so proud of myself!  Running for two is definitely different than running for one.

And since I somehow managed to lose my camera the day before (so sad), I had to steal these pictures off Emily's blog.  Thanks Em!

Jane, Megan (Em's runner friend), Emily, Melissa, me, Jennifer.  It was so fun to run with my sisters!!  And I include Emily and Jane when I say that.  Emily and Jennifer ran the 5 miler because they were recovering from injuries, and the rest of us ran the half!  We had such a fun weekend!  We stuffed ourselves with carbs at Pasta Jay's, explored downtown Moab, got ice cream, ate Subway, and stayed at a much cheaper motel in a town called Green River.  Anywhere in Moab was charging double and requiring a two night stay.  In retrospect, I would recommend staying another night.  Maybe next year!

After the run we went to Jennifer's brother-in-law's friend's house to shower and relax for a minute, then we headed off on an ETERNAL drive to a really cool place called Island in the Sky.  It was a mile in, mile out, which was probably really good for our legs after running 13.1 miles!  My knees were screaming at me (not used to running downhill...murder on the joints!), but other than that I felt great.

The only word that came to mind when we got there was VAST.  It was incredible.  Pictures never quite do reality justice.  Behind us is a crazy drop-off (we were on the "island in the sky") and beyond that was just...expanse.  As far as you could see.  It was really cool.

After our little hike (and LONG drive) we headed home.  We stopped in Price for dinner around 8:00, which was our first real meal of the day.  Not a good idea.  For the pregnant girl anyway.  I felt okay on the ride home, but probably because I was so stressed out because of the weather.  Melissa was taking a turn driving, and while we were in some super long canyon it turned to snow, which turned to driving snow, which was nearly impossible to see through in the dark on the slick road with oncoming traffic.  It was awful!  She was concentrating so hard on staying in our lane, that my job was to tell her when to turn her brights on and off.  I've never been so glad to get to Provo!  When Melissa got home she was sore in her shoulders from being so tense from driving, not sore from the race.  It was crazy!

It was such a great weekend, we had so much fun!  Can't wait to do it again!