St. George Marathon 2009

So it's been a great 5 months of training for the St. George marathon. I could not have done all those early mornings, long runs, injuries, bowel problems, etc. without my sister in law Jen. Thanks for all of the encouragement, and for deciding to do it, and talking me into doing it with you. So the day of the Marathon was a beautiful day. We headed off a little before 4:00 AM. Jim took us to the park where we loaded the busses up to Central. It was very cold, but we managed to stay warm by the fires. We started across the starting line about 4 minutes after the first runners. The run went great up until about mile 23-24. I then decided I was really stupid for doing this again! Luckily that is when you come down into town, and all the people are cheering. Jim and the kids were at mile 23, and it was so good to see them. Kayden and Conner even ran with us for a few minutes. We then saw Jenny and little Natalie, and then rounded the corner off of diagnal street and saw Andy, Marsjon, and Aaron and Tami. It was very helpful to see the wonderful faces of family. I tried to walk a few times after that, but Jen kept me going. As we came upon the finish line there was Tara, Melissa, Mom, Jim, and all the kids. It was so great to be almost done and to see smiling faces waving at you. Two weeks later I can honestly say it was a fun experience. We had a great time, lots of fun talks in our 18 weeks of training, and some very funny experiences. I don't have a lot of pictures, due to the fact that we don't have a working camera, but these are the ones that Melissa took.
Here we are crossing the finish line. Our chip time was 4:16:02. We were very happy with our time. I was excited that I took 10 minutes off of my last time in 2003. Thanks Jen for the great memories, and loads of fun.

I could not have done this without the support of my wonderful family, and super husband. Thanks so much, I love you guys!!

Thank you to all the friends and family who came out to support me! You are the BEST!!