I love races and running

I haven't blogged any of my races I have done this summer....and I don't even have pictures of them all.  My race buddy is Amanda and we ran a few fun races.  We did a trail 15K in Park City.

 I ran Ragnar Wasatch Back relay with my "sole sister" team (but sadly can't get my pictures to post).  Then a few months later we ran RedRock Relay.  It starts in Cedar and is supposed to end in St. George, but due to some major flooding that closed the freeway from St. George to Las Vegas, UDOT revoked RedRock's right to some of the roads we were going to run on.  They had to reroute semis and other traffic to several of those roads and didn't want us running with extra traffic.  So that race went from 210 miles to like 70 miles :(  It was still fun of course.  And it gave us a girls day in St. George to lay by the pool and relax!!

 This is the Park City trail series half marathon Amanda talked me into doing the weekend after I got back from RedRock Relay.  I wasn't planning on running it, but I can't turn down a race...especially when it's free.  A friend got injured and couldn't run it.  It was beautiful in Park City this time of year, the weather was fantastic and it was the hot air balloon festival so the views were beautiful with that and the changing leafs.  We were excited and ready to run.  

 Mile one was out of the way, and I noticed several yellow jackets off to the side buzzing around like crazy!  Right after I noticed them I felt several stings all at once all over me.  I thought it must be red ants bitting me because there were so many "bites" all at once.  I looked down and noticed several stingers in my leg and ankle.  I had a yellow jacket up my shorts stinging my thighs and one stinging my neck.  One got stuck in my hair.  It was crazy!!  It was painful and it was burning!!  What do I do??  Play it cool, keep running and pretend nothing happened.  Until another mile later I couldn't stand the pain.  I had to stop and ask someone to pull the stingers out of my neck and back.  Come to find out those people had been stung too.  Trail running is fun, and pretty but it can be frustrating and dangerous if you are stuck behind people slower than you.  It's single track, basically mountain biking terrain with lots of rocks and ups/downs/ switch backs.  So mile 4 I am running behind about 3 other people....all keeping a steady pace, but running right behind them all.  I was waiting for a little shoulder to pass them on.  But before I could someone fell and we all went down.  I had a bloody knee and it hurt, but I didn't realize that it was worse than that.  Or it could have been that I made it worse by running 9 more miles on it.  The next day I was limping and it was swollen.   I have to say this was my most interesting race.  They handed out metals and Benadryl at the end.  People from the beginning of the race to the end were getting stung.  Super strange.

These are just some of the races I have done this summer, I didn't get pictures of all of them, but there are more to come I have signed up for several more!