Big Cottonwood Half Marathon 2012

This is a little late but oh well I loved this race so I had to do a post.  Last Saturday morning Holly, Trent (our neighbor friend) and I headed up to the Big Cottonwood Half Marathon.  Holly and I were put together to pace the 1:45 group and Trent was pacing for his first time, the 2:00 group.  We got to our meeting place at the buses and waited for the “pace master.”  While we waited this fine feller that was checking Holly out ;) gave us oodles of glow bracelets and necklaces. 

He is a very kind chap and I will go ahead and defend him and say that I am nearly 100% positive that he was checking out Holly’s calves.  She has some juicy steaks if I’ve ever seen them and so we will say that that's what he was looking at.

We got our glowing goods and pace bands and hopped onto the bus.  It’s funny how the ride up to the starting line seems sooooo far away.  We finally got there and saw that they had space blankets, which was SUPER awesometastic!!  I just made that word up right then ;) JK!  It was actually on a sign that was along the course.  One day Holly and I were at the Spanish Fork Gold’s Gym, which can be quite entertaining…and annoying, anyways there was this meat head who said “Awesomesauce…I just made that up!”  Oh bull crap, Janae has been saying it for years.  Sorry for the tangent! J

We lined up and waited for the gun or in this case the horn…of a moving van!  It was still dark which was a little freaky, call me crazy but I like to see where I’m running.  Holly and I ran in our space blankets for a few miles until I finally got sick of mine and tossed it.  I realized we had probably been YELLING because of how loud the blankets were.  Oh well, we were warm so who cares if we were driving everyone around us nuts ;)  I quickly started talking to Brad who we would pace the entire race.  This was his first half marathon that he was doing for time.  He had run one other half with his wife who would finish around the 2 hour mark.  He said he would start with us and re-evaluate things around mile 7.  We also had Maria who was hoping to stay with us to secure her 1^st place in her age group.  There were many others who had come and gone but these two were in for the long haul.

It started getting light and the fall colors were AMAZING!!!  It was so peaceful and beautiful.  I love that I was able to do this race!  The miles flew by and once again we found ourselves ahead of schedule.  We told Brad and Maria that we had to slow down to get back on track.  Maria decided to go ahead because she was feeling good.  Brad admitted that he could use a little walk break.  We walked for a few minutes which is when we saw Todd, our gym buddy, who was volunteering.  He was such a great little cheerleader, such a nice fella’!

We started “running” again albeit quite slowly.  I’m not sure how we got so far ahead of ourselves…probably because the canyon was quite steep.  I kept checking my watch and it didn’t seem like we were that far ahead but suddenly we were like 3 minutes ahead.  We decided to send Brad on his way while we stopped to cheer people on for a few minutes.  We saw a few people who were very pleased to find out that we were ahead and that they would in fact beat 1:45.  It’s always nice to pass the pacer that you’ve been following…you’re welcome, anything I can do to help!

We hammed it up a bit for the Zazoosh guy.  These pictures are so ridiculous that they make me laugh every time I see them.   I look horrible but they do a fine job of showing what a great time we were having. 

White girls CAN jump!

Let's not talk about that one...okay?!?

Or that one!

I case you didn't know it's very cool to run with your eyes closed!

I guess we messed around for a little too long and looked at our watches to see that we had about 10 seconds to get 1:45:00 with quite a ways to go.  We sprinted to the finish and got 1:45:53.  Oh well, at least we were able to cheer on a few more people and we got our people to finish with plenty of time to spare.  Maria found us at the finish line and was so excited because she had in fact gotten 1^st place in her age group J  I was hoping to see Brad but we never did.  We decided to run back and find Trent.  We “ran” with him, he got a bit ahead too.

We wanted to see the full marathon winner and assumed he would finish any minute.  Of course we all know what happens when you assume things.  We waited and waited and waited.  We got to see a lot of people finish the half which was awesome.  It’s very inspiring to see someone finish something that has kicked their trash.  I LOVE watching some of the last finishers they are truly the strong ones!!!

We were just about to give up on seeing the winner when finally at 2:45 he came sprinting through.  It was awesometastic J to see him win the race.  This was the first year for this race and with the St. George Marathon just weeks away there wasn’t much competition.  He was of course shocked to have won his first marathon.  This was his 27^th marathon and he WON IT!  We talked to him for a second.  It was so fun to see someone who would normally not win take 1^st place!!

I’m so blessed to have the opportunity to pace races.  This race was very well organized, I would definitely recommend it.  Not only did they give us a Go BIG tattoo, an awesomely HUGE medal, a space blanket and running gloves.  They also posted all of our Zazoosh pictures to our Facebook page for FREEEE!  I love having the pictures but I would have to be crazy to pay to look like such an idiot.  The only problem I can come up with was that they didn’t have TruMoo at the end.  I love nothing more than some delicious chocolate milk at the end of a race.  They did have Jimmy John’s there handing out sandwiches which was nice.

Sorry for the long post, that is if you made it all the way through.