Saints and Sinners

When moving to a new place, usually one wants to find friends and to do things with those friends. Well, it turns out that the girls in my neighborhood run. For fun. Long distances. So in order to be social, I decided to attempt physical fitness and run with them. 

If you've been a reader with me for awhile, you will remember the races I ran in 2012. The longest one back then was 4 miles, and the last one I ran was when I was 10 weeks pregnant with the Deej. Having that nugget was all the excuse I needed to, ahem, "take a break from running for awhile" (read: quit).

So these girls don't run the 5k circuit, which is what I had been running two years ago. Oh no, they run half marathons. That's 13.1 miles, in case you were wondering. And I, in either a moment of genius or stupidity, signed up for the Saints and Sinners Half Marathon with them.

Saints and Sinners is a really cool race. Well, as cool as a race can be. It's in Boulder City, right outside of Vegas, it's gorgeous, it's got a lot of downhill running (which is easier than other running, but still not easy), and it's for a great cause. The proceeds go to fund kids who want to serve LDS missions but can't afford to, so that's pretty great.

The race was this morning (DJ went to bed on time tonight, miracle of miracles, which is why I'm able to write about this now rather than in weeks or months from it happening). I was up, dressed, and out the door by 5:50 this morning to jump in a van with three other girls from my neighborhood and ward, plus one gal's husband. We trekked over to Boulder City, did a little warm up, chatted, and at 7 in the morning, the race began.

I started training for this at the end of July, which gave me two months to prepare. That's not a ton of time, especially because I was going from zero to let's run a half marathon in that amount of time, so my goal was to run most of it and finish in under 3 hours. As we started, I was really nervous, but I knew that I'd feel like a beast once I'd finished that sucker. 

I did pretty great until about mile 9, which is when I started to get tired. Plus, that was during a patch of the run that was on gravel rather than pavement, and you bet I rolled my ankle during that patch. By the time I hit mile 11, I wanted to stop and be done and cry. My body hurt, I was tired, I was hungry, I had to pee, there were bats flying over our heads, and a giant tarantula crossed the path right in front of us. This probably sounds cheesy, but I started praying. I told God that part of me knew I could do it and asked if he'd help me remember that and help me have the courage to finish. And you know what? He totally did. I even had enough left to pick up the pace for the last half mile and sprint the last tenth of a mile through the finish line. And, reader, you know me well enough by now to not be surprised when I tell you I cried when I crossed the finish line.

My official time was 2 hours 33 minutes 39 seconds, which was so much faster than I thought I could do. I owned that sucker! (PS - if you are a reader who is a runner, you know that this isn't super fast, but I finished, so let me have my moment!) I beat Deg, who was coming to meet me at the finish line, by 20 minutes, so I waited for him to come so I could take some pictures with the Deej and celebrate my victory with them. He was bummed he missed it, but what do you do?

I really couldn't have done this at all without those sweet girls in my ward who dragged my lazy bum out of my house and whipped me into shape. Most especially, I'm grageful for my friend Tina, who ran the whole thing with me, who cheered me on and coached me and let me try to do the same for her.

OK picture time!

Getting ready to start this thing - still in a good mood.

I found this on my phone - apparently, when switching songs in the middle of the run, I took a selfie. I mean, why not? I guess I was having a good time at some point.

Halfway selfie! Obviously necessary!

Crossing the finish line - I ran through the "saints" finish line. If I ever decide I'm crazy enough to run this again, I may choose the "sinners" finish line just to spice things up.

DONE! WOOOOOOO!

 

Mandy, Sara, Tina, me (on a really bad angle, but whatever), and Tina. We rock!

Celebrating with my number one fan.

Checking out the medal that was nearly the size of his head!

In case you care, here are my stats. You probably don't, which is fine.