I'm not a fan of Aldo Leopold

I'm sure the man was a nice guy, but I'm not a fan of Aldo Leopold. Hate would be too strong a word, but his half marathon is HORRIBLE. First of all, it's MORE than a half marathon. For those of you experts, you already know that a half is 13.1 miles. This one was closer to 14 miles. I mean, if you are going to make me run 14 miles instead of 13.1, at least call it what it is. I want credit for that last 0.9 mile!!
(Plus we had made shirts that said, "13.1 then I'm done" and it wasn't funny to anyone anymore. They kept asking, "are you just going to lay down at 13.1 and not finish?" Yes, that's what we're going to do, genius).
If you recall the altitude map I posted earlier, the first 2 miles were pretty much straight up, and there were significant uphill portions thereafter. I'm a bit of a running novice, maybe all runs are that way, but it was torture. At about 6 miles I wanted to quit but realizing that I had told too many people about it, I "kept truckin". My hip flexor started shooting pains down my leg on the uphill portions at about 6 miles too, so I ended up dragging my leg. People kept asking me if I was OK (NO! Do I look OK? And even if, what are you going to do? Carry me?)
Fastforward to mile 12. I haven't seen anyone in a long time...no one ahead or behind. I started thinking, "am I dead last?? How embarrassing. I don't even want to finish." This was also happening at the final uphill portion, and my leg was killing me, so I opted to sit for a minute and collect myself. By waiting for a moment, I noticed that there was a group walking behind me. I know it's horrible to compare myself to others, but knowing I wasn't dead last made me feel better, enough to get back up and finish. My mom had sent me an email the day before reminding me to tell myself that "I can do hard things." I told Sarah W. about my mom's email and she told some hikers on her way that if they saw another red head wearing the same shirt she was, to tell her, "you can do hard things." So I ran past this group of hikers and they gave their normal words of encouragement, but then one looked me right in the eye and said, "You can do hard things. You can!" It made me laugh. And shortly after that I ran into Valerie, the running guru. She had finished much, much earlier, but ran back UP the hill to finish with each of us.
As I FINALLY approached the finish line, Matt & Ally and the other ladies & their husbands started cheering. I lost it. I was overwhelmed and embarrassed by the attention and I started crying. But they were taking my picture and I was CRYING. So I covered my face with my hands and that's how I crossed the finish line...with my hands over my face and crying.
I wish I had a more uplifting story...about how running in a metaphor for life and it doesn't matter when you finish as long as you finish. I don't believe a word of that unfortunately. It was hard, painful, discouraging and disappointing. Sometimes I do catch myself thinking about how "next year I'll train more uphill" or "next year I should do some cross training, that might help." We'll see.
Fortunately, our own camera's batteries died, so I have no pictures of that embarrassing moment, but here two of the other ladies:




Sunday I spent recovering. Then Monday I flew to Boston for the day for work. On a private jet no less. I wish I could say it was more like a rap video, but it was actually a little cramped. But it was nice not to have to go through security or get to airport an hour early (although noone told me that BEFORE I got there at 7:00 am).

Thursday night we had our ward Halloween party. Ally was a BYU cheerleader and she enjoyed playing at the church and eating candy. Halloween we thought her cheerleader outfit might be too cold so we put her in the frog costume. Poor kid fell. Twice. All the way to the ground and hit her forhead on the concrete. Then of course, she wanted to be carried after that, and she gets heavy after a while. But it was cute to see her "get it" towards the end. She would walk to the door and hold out her bag. Matt said she even said trick-or-treat once or twice.





I'm sad Halloween is over. A year to go until it's socially acceptable for grown-ups to dress up again.