St. George Half Marathon

A bunch of girls in my neighborhood decided to head down to St. George for the 2010 Half Marathon and 5k. There were 12 of us total who ran in the races--four of us ran the half and the others ran the 5k. When we were planning the trip, a couple husbands were thinking about going, but in the end, Omai was the only one who made the trip down. He was a really good sport about it. At one point all the girls were making plans about going to get a bite to eat and I asked him what he wanted to do. He said he didn't want to go out with all the girls so he would just hang with the other husbands. I panicked for a moment trying to recall the conversation I'm sure we had had when I told him he was the only guy going. He just laughed and said he would go get pizza and wait for all us girls to have our fun together.

Omai couldn't get off work until about 4:00 so we hit the road as soon as we could. There were a lot of warnings about bad weather so we decided to borrow my dad's car so we would have 4WD and enough room for all our baby gear. I was also envisioning the worst case scenario so I packed our sleeping bags and winter gear in case we were stranded on the side of the road for the night. Luckily, all that stuff just took up space for the trip and we didn't have to use it.

The snow wasn't too bad, but we hit a bad patch in Cedar City that didn't cause us too much grief. We rolled into sunny St. George around 9:30 PM and took another half hour trying to find our friend's house where we were staying. We unloaded the car and thought Bailey would for sure want to just eat and go to sleep, but because she had taken a late nap, she was wide awake and ready to play. Actually, I think hyper is more the word to describe it if a 9-month old can be hyper. She was dancing and singing and having the time of her life.

We crashed about 11:30 and woke up just in time to get all ready for the race. One of my friends who had come down with us had forgotten her running shoes, which we had picked up from her house before we left town so we hurried to meet up with her. The girls had also picked up my packet the day before with my number and timing sensor so we were anxious to find each other. About 10 minutes before the race I asked them if they had my number and they realized they had forgotten it in the other car that was headed somewhere else. One of my friends worked frantically to track down someone who could bring it to me, but in the meantime the race had started. So everyone was off to the races except me. My friend who had my packet showed up and I got all my gear on and I was off. It was kind of weird to start all alone, but then I realized it was kind of nice because I could see Omai and Bailey clearly and I passed a ton of people, which always feels good in a race, right :).

Me and Bailey before the race.




During the race Omai tried to meet up with me a few times rather than just waiting at the finish line for me, but it just wasn't happening for us. When I was approaching mile 4 he called me and asked where I was because he was waiting to cheer me on at mile 3. Then he went to mile 7 to cheer me on and called to find out where I was while I passed the 8-mile marker. We still hadn't seen each other when he called me at mile 11. But by this time he was on the other side of a big hill and couldn't get to me in time before I crossed the finish line. I was kind of emotional because I was way tired and I just wanted to see him, but he was on the other side of St. George. Oh boy! About ten minutes after I finished we finally found each other! Phew. We'll plan that better next time. Maybe I'll wear some kind of honing device or something.

Omai tried so hard to find me. I looked at my phone after and realized he had called 11 times during the race and one of the photographers got one of those moments on film. hehe. Oh how I love you Omai!





My and Bailey after the race, red face and all.




I ran the Bryce Canyon Half Marathon back in 2006 and my time was 2:00:20 so I was hoping for a similar time in St. George, but I was a little over at 2:03. I was pleased with my time and was actually excited for my next race. After I ran the Bryce Canyon race, I didn't run again for about a year because I was so burned out. I'm now training for the 2010 Riverton Half Marathon.