St. George Marathon

Well Saturday was the St. George marathon. We headed down Friday around 130pm and met my family down there. We were staying with my aunt who has a huge house! We went to the expo to get our packets it was packed! They had different booths and fun stuff. Select Health had a place to get your sugar and cholesterol checked. I've been told before that I have a tendency to be hypoglycemic which means that my sugar gets really low really quick and its hard to stabilize it. I got my sugar checked and the lady asked me when the last time I ate was. I had basically snacked the whole way down and had some pretzels and Gatorade before we left to the expo. She said that not to be worried but that my sugar would probably be high because of that...guess what it was??? 60. Its supposed to be at least 80...eek! That totally freaked my mom out and she was glad that we had decided to run together. After the expo Mom P, Dad P, Ben and I, and my Aunt Kumja went to Outback Steakhouse for dinner. My aunt is hilarious  They gave her this crab dip and she made this funny disgusted face it was so funny! Then we went back to the house and got all of our stuff ready for the race. Then we tried to go to sleep because we had to wake up at 4am ..ugh. We all got up got ready ate some breakfast and drove to the bus pickup. We got on the bus and went for quite a ride up the mountain. Mind you its pretty early in the morning but one girl on our bus talked loudly about her personal life the whole freaking time then... the bus stops and everyone stands up to get off and she looks at my dad and goes to touch his chest and is like "Do you have nipple rings?!" My dad's like excuse me? And this lady behind me is like "Do you always ask such personal questions?! My dad has nib guards because when your running it can make guys really sore and even bleed. My hell some people are insane! Who does that?! Then we get off the bus and it is freezing! Oh my gosh so cold! We had old hoodies and stuff to wear! Then as we are walking we lose my mom and dad. Talk about anxiety attack because I was going to run with my mom. While we were looking for them we found my really good friend who was actually my art teacher in high school and our parents are really good friends its crazy! She helped Ben and I find Mom and Dad P. We waited for an hour and a half two hours for the race to start. They had music playing and it was pretty fun but still freezing.

Starting Line.

Waiting for the race to start.

Freezing and my eyes are closed. Awesome!

Then they announced the race would be starting in about 10 minutes so we went to get lined up. They have what they call "Pacers" If you stay with them you will finish in the amount of time their flag says. Ben,Mom P, and I lined up with the 7 hours pacer. She was the last one and as long as you stayed in front of her they wouldn't kick you off of the race course. Then the race began! Oh this lady that was by my mom and dad said she got her nails done so in case they had to pick her up off the side of the road they would know she wasn't homeless...LOL! Anyways, the beginning of the race its always hard not to go super fast because you want to get out of the crowd and some people are running really fast and all the adrenaline its nuts! Well I lost Ben pretty quick but my mom and I stayed together about a mile or so in we took a bathroom break at one of the porter potties. I was wearing a fuel belt with water bottles on it and a pouch and after we started running again I realized I had lost 2 of my water bottles! Dang! Well from then on it went pretty good my mom and I had an awesome pace and we were making some great time. She kept me entertained by telling me about a book she had read. Around mile 7 there was a humongous hill that we walked it was so intense but then we started running again. We felt great and still had an awesome pace! Around mile the ball of my feet started to hurt and I could feel some hot spots on the sides of my feet. I tried to keep going but then the pain got worse and I began to limp. My mom was getting worried because if you start limping you start hurting other parts of your body By mile 13 I was in tears because of the pain and I did not want to give up I was angry at myself for not training and I really wanted to finish. My mom explained it wasn't worth it to keep going one because of my limping I was slowing down and might not finish in the 7 hours and two if I kept going I would make the injuries worse maybe even permanent so despite serious hesitation and anger I got on the first aid bus. My mom kept going and everyone else finished which is awesome!!! When the bus dropped me off at the finish line I took off my compression socks and I had huge I mean huge water blisters on my feet so I must have stopped at the perfect time. My dad said that he thinks it was the best marathon he has ever ran which is crazy he didn't even train and he went back 4 miles once he finished and ran to the finish with my mom. Everyone was exhausted so we went back to the house took showers and my aunt made us the most amazing lunch/dinner it was perfect! That night we had all bought tickets to Tuachans production of Hairspray. Everyone agreed it was one of the best shows we have ever seen and the enviroment was amazing! All in all it was a fun experience but I will never not train again. I'm hoping to run the Utah Valley Marathon in June of 2013.