26.2

September 12, 2016 I ran the Big Cottonwood MARATHON!  It was exciting, cold, beautiful, fun, painful, boring, hard, hot, exhausting and amazing all at the same time.  With 26.2 miles I experienced every emotion but mostly varied between love and hate for running :)

Our pre-race ritual.  Dinner consisting of carb loading at The Pizza Factory.  I load up on the spaghetti and garlic bread...YUM!

The bus shuttled us up the canyon to the top of Gardsman pass...it was like 6 am and it was freezing!!!

I had no idea what I was getting myself into...  The first 13 miles were AMAZING!  I loved every minute and was cruising.  The next 7 miles were pretty good, I was starting to get some calf cramps and so at at mile 20 I stopped at an aid station and they taped up my calfs to avoid tearing anything.  The about mile 21 I hated life, wondered why I was running and wish it was over.  Between miles 21-24 I was bored, I hated the music I was listening to, but I hated running without music, everything on me hurt and I was dying :), but as I got closer I realized I was almost finished and that kept me going.  When I was done I vowed to never run a marathon again, but if you ask me now I would tell you yes I would.  Runners are crazy!

My crazy, amazing runner friend that talked me into doing the full instead of the half...

I checked it off the bucket list...who knows if I will do another full.  Half marathons are more my style!!  I felt I accomplished something, didn't PR or anything but I didn't expect to considering I had just had a miscarriage a month before and hadn't really even trained to run!  Yeah me!