My family and I went up to St. George Friday evening and stayed at my cousin' house. When I woke up Saturday morning and saw white on the grass and wet streets I was nervous, but when I went outside and saw that nothing was falling from the sky and there was absolutely no breeze, I figured we where in for some good race weather. Doone ran the 5 k and did great! We showed up about 15 minutes before start time. Doone stayed in the car while I did a quick 8 minute warm up run. I decided to go with a long sleeve running shirt, running cap, shorts, and gloves. We headed over to the start line. I looked for anyone I recognized, didn't see anyone, said high to the guy next to me and they announced the race would start in a minute. Perfect timing! They said go and and off we went. I still didn't have a race plan accept to run comfortably hard and not worry about time. I set my watch so I could see what my pace for the mile I was on was, but so that I couldn't see my overall time. I had to force myself not to go out too fast early. It always seems so easy in the beginning. When I got to the first big hill on the 5th mile I backed of a tad so that I wouldn't red line. That hill is where I lost Fly last year. What a difference a year makes. I had such a cloudy head while running last year. I never felt good. This year I always had my head about me and never felt too uncomfortable. Right about mile 5 the women's race leader caught up to me and was receiving big cheers from the fans looking for the first woman. I said to her that I didn't know I had so many fans. It was fun running with her for about the next 3 or 4 miles, but then she faded off some and looks like ended up finishing about a minute and a half behind me. With about 2 miles to go I could see a little group of 3 runners up ahead that I seemed to be slowly catching. I finally got to about 10 yards behind them with about half mile to go and once I got that close I sped up and ran right past them hoping that none of the would be able to go with me, and it worked. I ran my hardest to the finish and was amazed to see my overall time when I turned the corner to the final stretch. I sprinted in completely spent, but with a new 1/2 marathon PR of 1:24:09. AP 6:25 And it was a much tougher course than my previous PR. I was surprised at how even my splits were considering the hills: 1 6:21 2 6:30 3 6:17 4 6:24 5 6:45 The first big hill 6 6:11 Coming back down 7 6:23 8 6:30 Climbing again 9 6:41 Still climbing 10 6:20 11 6:30 Starting to get tired 12 6:25 Good thing I had that small group of runners to focus on 13 6:16 Dug deep on the last mile 0.1 5:35 pace, sprinting to the finish The race was fun, but it was great to see everyone at the Forum Flyers Union for lunch. Teena and Smooth, Doone absolutely adored the two of you. How could she not? Thanks for encouraging her on her running and congrats to everyone on their great races. | 