Bryce Canyon Half Marathon

Guest post by Mommy:

Right at the beginning of my pregnancy, I had a dear friend, Kathryn, ask me to run the Bryce Canyon Half Marathon. I laughed her off. She didn't know I was pregnant, but besides I'm not a runner. I do not enjoy running. "Run a marathon" is NOT on my bucket list. But then I started thinking about running one of the races in Disneyland...really thinking about it. The thing with Disney races is that there are 16,000 people who run and to get a corral placement you need to submit a time. If you can't submit a time, you are placed in the very last corral....which starts almost 45 minutes after the beginning of the race. I don't want to be back there! I needed a time. So I did it. I signed up for the Bryce...it's downhill. I figured that would be a huge help. I also convinced my sister, Becca, to run it with me. 

Friday night we drove up to Cannonville, the little town where the race ends, and set up camp at the local KOA that was literally down the road from the finish line. 

We ate roasted marshmallows before calling it as early of a night as we could. Becca and I had to be up by 4:30.

Iva didn't love the fire and she flinched when another camping family tried to hand her a glow stick. She figured out it wasn't harmful pretty quick.

She even got brave enough to stand by Daddy AND the fire.

Here we are...hauling ourselves on the shuttle at 5 am. It was a little brutal, but I did get to see a shooting star just as I looked out our tent in the morning.

The sun was barely starting to rise at our starting line at the top of Bryce Canyon. It was only 48 degrees outside. We took off our coats and put them on the truck and then huddled around a fire in desperation. 

My hands were frozen for the first 2 miles, but then we hit the downhill section and I took off. So much so that I left Becca behind without realizing it. I thought she was keeping up, but I couldn't look back for fear of falling! That came with a few repercussions of hurt feelings and slight anger from my lovely sister which I don't blame her for.

I was still smiling at half way and the sun was out and it was beautiful.

Unfortunately, the FAST half of the race was behind me. It levels off a lot for the last 5 miles and it got hard. I had to start running for 2 minutes and walking for 1 minute and then the freezing rain started at mile 11. Storm clouds kind of came out of nowhere. It was a little demoralizing for me. I was cold and wet and I wanted to be done. I pushed through though and crossed in 2:08! Luckily, Pete found a woman who used to be in our ward who was able to give him and the girls a little of shelter and warm blankets to wait for me since they also got soaked! (Only one of our tents had a rain fly on it and we came back to camp to find mine and Becca's kind of swimming in water...)

Becca crossed at 2:19 and eventually was willing to hug me!

Never again. That was our thoughts initially. I'm still thinking it. Maybe I'll do the 10k at Disney because I don't think I could do 13.1 FLAT miles....