Snow Canyon Half Marathon

Dan, Burke and I at 6 AM the morning of the race

When Burke and I started running together last year, it was not a very pleasant experience.  Burke is usually a very happy, optimistic person, but when we would run more than a mile he would become very grouchy during the run, getting easily annoyed if I tried to cheer him on and it would take him about ten minutes after each run before he would be his usual self again.  When I set a New Years resolution for us to run a half marathon by the end of the year, he reluctantly agreed, but I secretly wondered if we would really make it happen.  We ran off and on through the spring, but in August it was like a switch flipped on and Burke decided we were going to run this race no matter what!

Darling Emmett and Lydia with their homemade signs to cheer on their Daddy.  They were so sweet to stick around and cheer for Burke and I while wonderful Cassie took pictures as we finished the race.  Thank you Cassie!

We decided on the Snow Canyon Half Marathon in St. George and found a 12 week training schedule online.  We only had 10 weeks until the race, so we cut out the second and third weeks and then, remarkably, we stuck to it.  There were a lot of days when neither of us wanted to run or our nights seemed so busy that we wouldn't have time to train, but we very rarely missed.  On the shorter runs, we would push Daphne and run as a family or I would take her in the mornings so Burke could run solo in the evenings.  It was a big time commitment, but we made it work.  Once Burke decided he was IN, I never heard a word of complaint from him again.  In fact, we even began to look forward to our runs, knowing how good it would make us feel afterwards.

Coming onto the Snow Canyon High School track for the last quarter mile.

November 3 came faster than I expected.  I loved getting up early with Burke, securing our time chip to our shoes, riding the buses up past Diamond Valley and jumping up and down in the freezing cold air to try and keep warm while we waited for the race to begin.  I loved the feelings of nervous excitement in my stomach as the Hunger Game-ish countdown played over the sound system followed by a collective cheer from over 2,000 people as the first runners crossed the starting line.

Our goal was to run the race in under 2 hours.  When I ran the Top of Utah Half Marathon in 2010 with my sisters we did the race in 1:53:51 and I secretly hoped that I could beat my time by a couple of minutes.  As we ran, we began to pass pacers holding up signs that read "2:30", "2:15", etc., showing that if you kept with them the entire race you would finish in 2 hours and 30 minutes.  We decided we would try and find the 1:50 pacer, but when we suddenly came upon them, our pace actually felt stronger than theirs and we agreed to try and maintain the pace we were currently running for as long as possible.  

Sprinting to the finish line!

The course was absolutely beautiful as we made our way through the red rocks of Snow Canyon National Park.  Even more beautiful to me was the feeling of unity I had with Burke as we ran together, side by side, throughout the entire 13.1 miles.  I felt so proud of him, my sweet NON-running-husband-turned-racer.  This was not his goal, but he made it his own and came out a total rock star from the experience!  We didn't stop once (another one of our goals), except for 10 seconds when I grabbed a goo shot from one of the aid stations and it made me gag so bad I had to go back for some water to wash it down.

The race finished with a lap around the track at SCHS and as we approached the gate to the track to our great delight we saw Burke's parents, Catherine and Matt, our cutie-pie nieces and our Daphodil all cheering, waving signs and calling our names!  Something about having our family there to support us and especially seeing our Daphne baby smiling at us from her grandma's arms totally brought tears to my eyes.  It made me realize that I always want to be in this position - doing something hard for me so that I can teach my daughter that it is possible to do hard things!  

To my great delight we finished in 1:44:58 (Burke beat me by one 3/10s of a second!) smashing my time from Top of Utah by 9 minutes!  This is probably due in large part to the race being primarily down hill, but I'll take it!  We came in 355th and 356th place out of 1,541 people listed on the race results web page, although we heard there were over 2,000 running.  I placed 137 out of 956 women and 12th out of the women in my 20-24 age bracket.  And just a shout out to our brother-in-law Dan who ran the race in 1 hour 33 minutes which is an average of a 7 minute mile!  Wow! 

We have been hardly able to move since then, but are still floating in the clouds - so grateful to have made our goal a reality!