I woke up this morning and it was raining a little bit. I ran from my parent's house to the start of the race. It was my 1.15 mile warm-up. The rain stopped and I was really happy. I met up with the St. George guys at the start. It was good seeing them again. Their were a lot of high school cross country kids there. I didn't recognize too many other people. I really wanted to go sub-16 today so I went out quick. I went out front and had the lead for the entire race. I heard a couple guys behind me but told myself just to focus and not worry about them. I had to smell gas of the 4-wheeler/"lead car" because it stopped a couple times as I caught up to it. The wonderful smell of gas! I came around the last corner and knew that I would be close to 16:00. I crossed the finish line in 15:54. It is not the fastest course due to 2 decent hills on the course so I was very pleased with my time. They clocked me in 15:52 but I will go with my Garmin. I was happy to get a new 5k PR. My splits were 5:12, 5:08, and 5:03. I went back and ran with my wife and sister until they crossed the finish line. I won a free pair of shoes at Rebel Sports. I will probably use it to buy another pair of trainers. It makes the trip worth it. The St. George guys did well in the race. Great job guys. Steve Hooper, Dave, and me went up to run part of the marathon course afterwards. It was raining really bad but we decided to do it anyway. We started up at the turnoff for the Snow Canyon State Park. I was hoping to push the pace but the rain slowed us down a bit. We went down too the finish line of the marathon. We went 10.5 miles at a 5:59/mile pace overall. The rain was so bad at times I couldn't see. Also, we were running in 2-3 inches of red dirt water at times. The shoes got pretty heavy. It was fun running with Steve and Dave though. I decided to run from the finish line back to my parent's house in Santa Clara. I added another 6.25 miles to make the run a total of 16.75 miles. I was happy to get in the miles and run part of the marathon course. I am real excited for the marathon in 2 weeks. It should be lots of fun. | 