Utah Part Two: First Swing Ride, First Sleepover, and First Post-Brody Half Marathon

I met up with one of my good friends, Sherstin, at the park the Thursday after I got to Utah. While we were there, Brody had his first ride in a swing. It was hard to capture some good pictures with just my phone, but he did the cutest little chuckles while he was experiencing the swing for his first time. 

Boston had fun running around with CC in my parent's backyard. It was really cute to watch him play with CC all by himself. He loves dogs. 

CC and Boston were buddies. Every morning Boston would feed CC all by himself without being asked.

I really like my parent's big backyard with lots of pretty green grass. Boston spent a lot of time back there. 

 He even tried climbing some trees. I used to love climbing trees, and I remember asking my parents when our trees would be big enough to climb. Ten years later when they were finally big enough to climb, I was too big to climb them. I never thought my own kids would be climbing them someday! 

Boston was so excited to have some sleepovers with his cousins while we were in Utah. He's been begging me to have a sleepover, so I told him he could have one with his cousins. He had been looking forward to it ever since.  

I was doing the American Fork half marathon the first Saturday we were in Utah, and since my sister Jessica lives in American Fork, me, my mom, Brody, and Boston all stayed over Friday night. 

That's when Boston got to have his first sleepover. They watched The Lego movie, and then Justin helped them make a fort where they played with glowsticks and stayed up way too late. 

Here's a picture of some of the people in the We Run San Antonio group that I started training with when Brody was about 9 weeks. I'm so grateful to have such an awesome running group to be apart of here. It gave me the motivation I needed to train hard for my first half marathon since having Brody. I met with this group every Tuesday night at the track for interval workouts, and also every Saturday morning for long runs, then I ran on my treadmill Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays to prepare for the American Fork half marathon I had signed up to do while in Utah.

Even though I was sick and got zero sleep the night before (due to above mentioned sleepover and having to catch the race bus at 4:30AM), I was still hopeful and excited to run this half marathon. I couldn't wait to run in the beautiful, cool, dry mountains. 

I woke up around 3:15AM to pump a bottle for Brody, then and drive myself to the bus loading area where all the runners would be bused to the staring line. As I got ready in dark that morning, I tried to be as quiet as I could. I guess I didn't do a very good job though because I accidentally ran into a few chairs and dropped some ice cubes and stuff. Oops. I barely made it to the bus loading area on time. I almost always get lost whenever I drive to a new place, and I knew if I made one wrong turn I'd be late. I was praying that I wouldn't get lost on my way there, and I didn't. That never happens to me, so it was a miracle! I was so grateful! I parked and then sprinted to the bus loading area just in the knick of time to catch the last bus. I normally wouldn't have cut it so close, but I didn't realize that my sister lived so far away from where I needed to drive that morning. 

The weather was perfect, the mountains were beautiful, and I was feeling pretty darn good compared to how I had felt the few days leading up to the race. I came down with a nasty cold the day after I got to Utah. It was going around like crazy. It consisted of a sore throat, lots of tiredness, and a cough. Luckily I hardly had any congestion. I think I was so excited and ready to race that my adrenaline made up for most of the sickness and lack of sleep. 

I felt great for the first 8 miles. Probably because they were downhill. :) The last 5 miles were flat with a few small hills. My quads were completely dead for the last 5 miles due to all the downhill, so I really had to tough it out to the end. 

I finished with a time of 1:41, and I was really happy with that time. To top it off, I got to try Kneader's french toast for my first time. That's what they were serving at the finish line. It was delicious. I'm sure it tasted even better after running 13 miles. I loved this race, and I will definitely do it again if I ever get a chance. It is very well organized, the medals were really nice, the post-race food was delicious, and the best part is that all the money raised goes towards cancer. 

It took me forever to find my car after the race because I was in such a hurry to catch the bus that I had forgotten to take a mental note of where I parked. 

I had my sister take a quick picture of me when I got back so I'd have at least one race day picture. 

I'm glad this race went well. It made all the effort I put into training worth it! The second half marathon I did 6 days later did not go well at all. I was soooo sore after this race that I couldn't even walk normal for 2 days because of the beating my quads got on the downhill. Running 13 miles 6 days later was a bad idea, but oh well, I learned my lesson. I'll have to blog about that race in another post.