St. George Marathon

Saturday, Oct. 3rd

Dusty and I ran the St. George Marathon. In other words 26.2 miles! This was a really dumb marathon to train for, if you live in Phoenix like we do, we had a lot of 5 am runs to avoid the hot temperatures here. We really should have ran one in the spring to take advantage of the nice winter weather we have, but a handful of Dusty's family was running the St. George Marathon so we thought it would be fun to do it with them and it was for the most part. I ran most of the race with Dusty's brother Craig. I felt great during the race, this was my 4th marathon and this was my best experience. I was kind of nervous going into the run because there are NO hills to train on here in Phoenix (except for a 50 meter overpass that I would occasionally do hill repeats on) the marathon drops in elevation a couple thousand feet but there are a lot of rolling hills throughout the course. However, I still felt pretty good the entire race and never felt like I was going to pass out; I did feel like I was going to throw up, but not until mile 26 only having that .2 left. I was happy about my time. 3 hours 21 min. I had a PR (personal record) of 5 minutes of improvement and qualified for the Boston Marathon, which we are planning on going to in April. It was great to run with Craig he had a GPS watch and kept close tabs on our pace. My good friend from high school Summer Barnes ran the marathon too, this was her first marathon and she did awesome, she caught up to us around mile 17 and we ran the rest of the race together, it was fun to see her she always livens things up.
On the other hand Dusty experience was on the NOT so fun side. He was REALLY excited to run the race with someone in the family. As we were at dinner the night before we all talked about the times we were shooting for and budding up with people to run with. He had decided to run the race with his sister Jocelin. They started out and the first 3 miles went by really fast, they were talking and laughing and having a great time. She made a quick bathroom break, Dusty waited for her and somehow missed her when she jumped back in the crowd of runners, he waited for about 10 mins. ran against the crowd for a min. then ran the next 23 long miles by himself. . . Dusty has learned that he is a social runner and tried to strike up a few conversations with people along the way - but no takers! :( To top things off the pod casts he had diligently prepared for the 26.2 mile race, did not load on to his ipod shuffle, so he had 23 miles to…run and think. When I told him there is always next year he simply said, “When pigs fly!”

We don't have any pictures from the marathon yet, we may get some from family later. We did however, take this goofy picture later that day.