Provo Halloween Half Marathon

I could not be happier that my mom talked me into doing this half marathon. It was so much fun, especially because I was running with my best friend.

We had to be on the bus at 6:30 am and were taken up to just a little above Sundance. There was snow and it was freezing. Not to mention we had to stand in a heated  tent, packed like a can of sardines for two hours! Not fun. Finally it was our time to run. We started down the road and it was way steep, plus there was gravel so that was a little scary. Once we crossed the highway we were cruisin! Oh and by the way... I did not train for this race! My longest run was 5.5 miles.... hmmmm. anyways... We were feeling so good. We made it to our first water station at Vivian's Park and started on the trail. Me and Kayt both kept saying how good we felt and I was feeling better at that point of the race than I was at the same point during my AF half. We were at about mile 7, the mile i started walking last half and I was still going strong. Then the back track, we had to do a little detour to make the trail longer. It was about a mile steadily up hill. I thought I was done for, but I made it the entire way up and down. From there we kept running. We hit mile ten, the hardest mile of my first half, and Kaytlin just kept telling me I could not stop the entire mile. I didn't. Finally we made it to a water station at mile 11 and walked while we drank our water. About 30 feet and then started running. At around 11.5 my feet and legs were so tired, I needed my last bit of caffeine to get me through. We walked as I got my energy strip out and stuck it in my mouth. The first step when we started running was not pleasant. Shooting pain went right up the side of my right knee. Great. It hurt so bad but we kept going. I walked about another 50 feet during mile 12 and then there was no stopping. I ran through the pain down to the finish line. My parents and brother were there to take picture and cheer us on to the finish. We linked arms and skipped over the finish line. Done!! That race went by so fast and I felt so good. I was proud of myself and how far I ran consistently, especially for not training at all. We went to lunch after but I ended up leaving early because I am hypoglycemic and was so light headed and wanted to throw up. I went home and laid on the couch while my mom made me a smoothie. I feel so much better! My knee is really sore and still in pain, which I don't see getting much better tomorrow, but keeping it easy is what I will be doing this weekend. Overall it was so much fun and it is one I will be running next year :)