THE NEW YEAR

This year started out great! Annie, Heidi, Jessica Palmer, and I all decided to train for and run the Painter's 1/2 Marathon in St. George. We started our training in August and came up with a schedule that worked for us all. We all trained hard and had a great time running together and getting to know each other better. I've been running and training for different races for 4 years and this was the first one that I have trained with others. It was a lot of fun and I hope that we can all do another one together sometime. Of course I'll be doing plenty so they can join me anytime! :) The run was on January 17th, we all woke up that morning a little nervous and anxious to begin the run. We all started out together and stayed with each other until about mile 2 where Heidi and I went a little bit ahead of Jessica and Annie. Heidi and I stayed together until about mile 10 or 11, that is where I decided to sprint to the end to see if I could make it under 2 hours. I felt great the entire run I had plenty of energy and have never sprinted that far and long at the end of a race. I had on my gps watch and was tracking my pace and distance, once I had finished I was looking at my numbers and realizwhich I'm still amazed about because I have never done that before, especially at the end or around mile 10 in a race, which is usually the mile that I hit the wall. I came in at 2hr5min, Heidi was about 5mins later then Annie and Jessica at 2hrs 20mins. We all did so great and I'm so proud of them for running and training so hard. One thing that was really fun that we decided to do was get matching tank tops that had our last names printed on the back. We went with the color green, which is a good color to wear in a race--easier to spot! You wouldn't think that finding tank tops and getting them printed on would be that big of a problem but it was...haha!! It all worked out in the end and it was a lot fun having them.