The Canyonlands 1/2 Marathon

A couple of months ago I won entry in to The Canyonlands 1/2 Marathon in Moab, UT. I was SO excited to go to this race for a couple of reasons. One being I had never been to Moab and the other is I had a friend coming down from Spokane that I haven't seen in 10 years and she was running the race also.

A couple of weeks before the race I got REALLY bad shin splints, so I had to not run the race; however, I still went down to Moab to cheer on my friend Christy.

A couple of weeks before the race, Christy's Uncle James won entry in to the same race! Yay!!! This was going to be his first race EVER!

The race was on 3/19, so we made the 4 hour drive down to Moab the day before. We checked in to our hotel and shortly there after, we went to dinner at Pasta Jay's. We ended up calling it an early night so that we could get back to the hotel and Christy & James could get to bed to rest up for the race.

We got up the next morning and I took James and Christy to the finish line because they had to be bused up to the starting line. I ended up going back to the finish line around 11:30 to watch Christy, James and her other Uncle Gerard and Aunt Klea run in to the finish.

As I was standing at the finish line, there was one girl that came running in to the race that shocked me because she moved me very emotionally and I seriously got a HUGE lump in my throat and almost started to cry. As she was running the last 100 yards or so, she stopped and bent over and was crying and dry heaving and saying that she couldn't do the rest. I just started yelling at her "You can do it! You're almost there! You're SO close!" I was just yelling anything & everything I could think of that I know I would want to hear if I was in her place. A few seconds later she stood up and ran in to the finish. I had no clue who she was, but I was SO proud of her.

Christy, James, Gerard and Klea did awesome in the race. With this being James' first race, he just wanted his time to be around 2 1/2 hrs. He had only been training for 2 1/2 months. I personally thought that was a fast run for someone who had only been training 2 1/2 months. I mean, I had trained for quite a while before I did my first 1/2 marathon and I came in at 2:10. Well, James shocked us all. He finished the race in 2:01! He finished the race 3 seconds faster than his brother Gerard!

After the race we all went back to the hotel and Christy & James laid down and I went out to try and find some mementos for my family, but didn't find anything.

Around 3:30, Klea and Gerard took us on a simple little hike up a canyon. It was actually a trail for dogs and stuff. It was SO fun. We came to a little river at the end of the hike. It was alot of fun.

We went to a mexican restaurant for dinner and then after dinner, because it was supposed to be a super moon, we took a hike up to Delicate Arch via moonlight. There was cloud cover, so it was darker than a stack of black cats. We all had headlamps, but otherwise, it was dark.

We got up to Delicate Arch and none of my pictures turned out because it was so dark. I find it quite humorous, but thankfully Christy's camera took some awesome pictures. It wasn't too hard of a hike. I felt kind of bad because one of the guys on the hike had a bad knee, but he wanted to do the hike any ways. So, on our way down the mountain, me and Christy stayed behind to help him down the mountain.

I loved it though, while we were up on the mountain right next to the Arch, there were some ladies that had a little bit to drink at dinner and they were singing Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond. Someone brought their iPad up with them so we actually had the music to Sweet Caroline as well. Then they were singing along to Song Sung Blue by Neil Diamond. I pulled out my camera and started recording it because it reminded me of being at the dueling piano bar that I go to every Saturday night. I loved it!

We went back to the hotel, crashed cause we were so tired, and then got up and came home the next day.

I'm bummed that I didn't get to run the race. I've heard it was beautiful scenery, but with more races coming up in April, I needed to sit this race out. I'm thinking of trying to run The Other 1/2 Marathon down in Moab in October.

Here is one of the videos I took while up at Delicate Arch: