Bryce Canyon Half Marathon

I finally ran a Half Marathon! I have been wanting to run a half marathon for a quite a while now, and have never been able to find one close enough to where I live, or one that isn't on Sundays. After moving to Toquerville, UT for the summer(Southern Utah for peeps that don't know where it is) I found an awesome running parter to run with. She didn't run the half with me, but she did run a 5K and a 10K with me this summer.
The half marathon has the distinction of going through Bryce Canyon National Park, a beautiful park full of amazing rock formations and colors in Southern Utah.




I wanted to beat this girl and one other girl so bad because they kept stopping to walk at all the water stops, and I never stopped. Then they would pass me up each time. At the end of the race, I sprinted past both girls and creamed them. That was pretty sweet!


Here I am after the race, feeling like I might die. It was a tough race, but I was so glad I did it. I was pretty happy with my time. For my first half, I placed 63rd out of 625 girls. My time was just under 1:45. So I pretty much ran 8 minute miles the whole race, or I ran 7 minute miles at the beginning and slowed down to 9 minute miles near the end. The only bad part of the race was that around mile 10, I got a really bad sideache that lasted almost the whole rest of the race.


Caleb ran the 5k race that took place during my half marathon. He was pretty happy to place 2nd in his age division. He called his race the "The Weenie Race." I concurred.


After the race was over, Caleb and I drove through and saw Bryce Canyon.


I love this picture, it just looks so cool!




When we first got to Bryce Canyon we went to packet pick-up where we received folders with our race number, and an outline of info. Then we got our t-shirts.
There was a spaghetti dinner that runners could pay $10 for the night before the race, so Caleb and I decided that it sounded pretty good and we ate up. Then we drove back to where we were going to stay for the night. We had to camp the night before the race, which I didn't mind so much until we set our tent up in the dark an I had to sleep on rocks. I feel like I didn't get any sleep at all, but when my alarm went off at 4:50 A.M., I got up to get ready for the race that started at 6:00. Then I ran a Half Marathon. I loved it!