Explore Your Mountains!

Last Saturday was the Race for the Cure here in Salt Lake.  I love this race!  It's not competitive at all, and everyone is there just to have a good time.  It is the only time of year that you will ever see me wearing pink!  It's all about saving the boobies!

Tricia and Olivia bought us all matching t-shirts.  We found yoga capris at Costco that we all love, so Olivia and I bought us all matching capris.  Then we were all due for a new pair of running shoes, and these the blue ones were the only ones we all liked, so we have matching shoes too.  We were quite the sight!

John came up and joined us.  He's so supportive of my running craziness...one of the many things I love about the guy!

Here is a look at our awesome t-shirts and the people I love who had/passed away from breast cancer.  LOVE these women!

Here's Tricia remotely exploring my mountains...hahaha!  Makes me laugh so much!

Here is the standard K-Cos face...

T-Rock is ready to roll!

O-Town is ready to win the race!

Here is me running the race.  As I was taking the picture John said, "You love taking pictures of yourself, don't you?"  Haha!  Why yes, yes I do!  I guess I'm a little vain!

Here is Johnny getting his run on.  We ran together.  I was proud of him.  He ran almost the whole 3 miles, and that is after doing no exercise since breaking his elbow about a month ago.  I would have died if I tried to run three miles out of no where!

Here are the ladies in our group.  Olivia's friends, Debbie, joined us too.  It was a perfect morning!

Me and the boy...

Walking back to the car.  I love starting off a Saturday with a nice run with friends for a great cause!

Explore your mountains everyone!!

Thou Shalt Run

 Olivia and I ran another half marathon yesterday.  This was the second one for me.  We have been training for a couple of months now, so we were very ready to run this thing and get it over with.  We did the Provo City Half Marathon.  It starts up Provo Canyon at South Fork Park.  You run for about the first 7-8 miles down the Provo River Trail.  It was so perfect and so beautiful.  The most beautiful thing about it is that it is a gradual downhill the whole way.  When you come out of the canyon, you run the last 5-6 miles down University Ave.  I love Provo so much, so this race was perfect for me!  I loved running by Bridal Veil Falls, Tucanos, LaVell Edwards Stadium, and right into downtown Provo to the finish line.
The night before, we headed down to Provo to get our race packets, buy BYU race shirts, and eat some dinner.  John and his girls and nephew met us at the Brick Oven for dinner.  We had to carb up for the race, so we got pasta, but it was so hard to be at the BO and not get pizza!!  Poor little Payten was sick so I didn't get a picture of her or Travis, but here we are at the Brick Oven.

John getting O pumped up for race day.

Sydney and Me

 After dinner, John and the girls wished us luck and headed home.  Olivia and I headed to our friend Kara's to stay the night in Provo.  She was so nice to let us crash there so that we didn't have to get up so early to make it to the race in the morning!
The race started at 7am.  The last bus left from downtown to take runners up to the start at 5:30am.  So we got up at 4am (after a not so great night of sleep...different bed, race anticipation, fear of alarm malfunction...you know the drill) and headed to catch a bus to the start.  This was my first race to have a timing chip on my shoe, and here's a picture of my brand new running shoes for the season!

 On the bus and on our way up Provo Canyon!!

 It wasn't the warmest morning ever, and we got the race start about 1.5 hours before the race started (don't ask me why they bussed up there so dang early!), so all the runners were crowded around a few campfires just hanging out and freezing.  About a half hour before the race started, we got in the huge line for the port-a-john. 

 All set for victory!!

 Sporting our new Coug running shirts!!

 The first 10 miles went by so fast for me, and I had been running way ahead of my normal pace to whole way (thanks to the downhill and race day adrenalin).  I wish I could have had my camera the whole time, it was really pretty and peaceful in the canyon right along the river.  I was really feeling great until about mile 11.  Then I was feeling ready to be done!  My thumb that I sprained last weekend had swollen up pretty good and was so stiff.  My legs were starting to be pretty sore and tired.  So I just tried to run faster so I could be done sooner!  My real goal for this race was to be under 2 hours, but I would have been satisfied with beating my time in my first half marathon last August (2:11:38).  I finished this race in 1:56:29!!  I beat my time from last August by 15 minutes and averaged an 8:55min mile.  That is absurd for me!!  I wanted to bawl at the end, but I pulled it together.  I don't know what it is about finishing a long race like this that makes you want to cry at the end, but it has happened both times.  It must just be the emotional exhaustion, but I thought several times throughout the race, "I can't believe that my body can do this."  I feel so blessed to have a healthy body, legs and feet that work, lungs and a heart that function properly, and a competitive mentality that always wants to do better than the time before.

 Olivia beat her Park City Half Marathon time by over 25 minutes.  WHAT?!?  She killed this thing!  We are both planning on this race being our fastest ever so we won't be disappointed in future races (Top of Utah Half Marathon still to come in August).  I'm so grateful for O!  I don't think I would do this without her as my running partner and motivator!  She's simply the best!

 Look at those rockin' medals!

 

 

 

 The slogan for the Provo City Half Marathon was "Thou Shalt Run" and run we did!  So fun!
Then we backed up the race with breakfast at Magleby's...yummmm!

 

I'm so sore today.  I'm walking around like a 90-year-old lady, but I'm so happy to have accomplished another milestone in my running journey!  Hopefully my knees will hold out for many more races to come!

Thumbs Up!

Last Friday was right up there with the weirdest days of my life.  It started out like any normal Friday.  I went to work.  I was excited to get the work day over with so I could get on to my weekend.  Holly and I went out driving and mapped the Salt Lake International Airport for a few hours.  We drive it once a year to make sure we have it as up-to-date as possible.  We got back to the office around 12:45pm.  I was wearing a long skirt because I was planning to head to temple straight from work.  We were walking up the stairs to the door of our office, and I tripped on my skirt up the stairs.  My right thumb took the full weight of the fall somehow.  I immediately thought I had broken it or done something severe.  It hurt SO bad!  It appeared to be ok and it seemed fully functional, so I shook it off and kept heading into the office.  When we got to the door of the office, I got super lightheaded and felt like I was going to pass out.  So I stood there for a minute and gathered myself.  Then I felt fine and headed into the office and over to my desk.  I docked my laptop and turned it on.  The next thing I knew, I was waking up with Holly over me looking rather concerned.  I asked her, "what is happening to me?"  She was like...you passed out.  She said she hadn't been watching me but just heard a huge crashed and I had disappeared behind my desk.  When she came over, my eyes were rolling back into my head.  Slightly scary for her I would think!  I would have panicked probably!
I laid there for a few minutes trying to figure out what was going on.  I sat up and felt fine.  My head and jaw hurt where I apparently smacked them during the fainting episode.  And my thumb still hurt pretty bad.  It was a little bit swollen but nothing alarming.  I eventually got back up in my chair and started checking my emails and going about my day thinking that the whole thing was weird but nothing to be alarmed about.  I thought the pain from the thumb thing had just made me pass out for some reason (can those two things even be connected?  no clue!).  I fully planned to finish out my work day and head to the temple as planned. 
I told my boss what had happened and she said I should go to a doctor and be checked out just to make sure nothing serious was wrong.  I was hesitant because I felt normal, but I thought it definitely couldn't hurt just for the peace of mind.  She suggested I call the 24 hour nurse hotline on the back of my medical insurance card and see what they suggest.  So I got on the horn with a nurse and explained the whole scenario.  She asked me a bunch of questions about my overall health and then made her recommendation.  She said that I should call an ambulance immediately and go to the ER.  Excuse me? An ambulance? Do you know how expensive an ambulance is?  I asked her if it was ok if my coworker just drove me to the ER.  She said her recommendation was an ambulance but that it was up to me and if I chose to have Holly take me, then she would have to put a note in my record that I went against her recommendation.  Holly took me to the ER.  Let's not overreact here people!  But her recommendation did make me nervous.  Maybe there really was something seriously wrong me.
When I got to the ER, there was no wait at all and I got right in.  The nurses got me all hooked up to an IV and an EKG.  Was this really happening to me?  So bizarre!  The doctor came in and asked me about everything that had happened.  He jokingly asked if I was drunk on the job.  Then came the really funny part.  After asking a bunch of questions about my health, medications, allergies and all that, he asked if there was any chance that I could be pregnant.  I said no.  Then he asked what I do to prevent pregnancy.  I stared at him for a second and said, "Nothing."  Hahaha...I do nothing to prevent pregnancy.  Well, it's a fact isn't it?  He looked at me like I was making no sense, which I wasn't, but in my mind I was.  Then I said, "Abstinence...I practice abstinence."  What I really should have said was, "I'm a 32-year-old virgin, sir, don't let that news ruin your weekend!"  I'm sure I had the doctor and the two nurses pretty amused by that point.  The doctor was awesome though and said he expected that nothing was seriously wrong with me but that they just needed to monitor me for a few hours.  My main concern during all of this was if I was going to be able to do my 10 mile run the next morning.  I told them that there couldn't be anything wrong with me because I have a race coming up in a week.  I needed to get my long run in tomorrow to train.  That's all I was thinking.  Once they found out I was a runner, the super low heart rate made more sense.  My nurses never got over how low my heart rate was...haha!  I love my little ticker!  It does such a swell job!
I had to provide a urine sample for them to test.  That was an adventure.  I overflowed the miniscule container and peed all over my hand.  There were wires hanging off my body all over the place and my hospital gown kept falling off through the whole ordeal. It would have been quite the sight to see.  After that, I sat in the hospital room on the EKG machine for a couple of hours.  So boring!  Luckily, I remembered that I had my mini BofM in my purse, so I got some good reading in.  The doctor came in around 4pm to say that there was nothing wrong with me as far as he could tell.  He said that sometimes when our body experiences intense, severe pain, it will cause our blood vessels to constrict and not enough blood gets to our brain.  In order to get our blood flow back to normal, our bodies will make us pass out so that we go horizontal and blood can flow better throughout the bod.  Moral of the story...if you experience severe pain and feel lightheaded. just lay down for a few minutes.  Real moral of the story is that I won't wear that skirt that is too long for me anymore so that I don't trip up stairs anymore.  And yes, I sprained my thumb, passed out, had to go to the ER for a few hours, and ended up being completely fine.  I guess I'm a pansy.  I always thought I had a fairly high tolerance for pain.
This was the only picture I took to document this adventure.  I had little nodes and stickies all over my body (you can see one on my shin).  Oh and the nurse was also very impressed with my calves.  Haha!  Don't be jealous, girlfriend!  They are ginormous, and I boots do not exist that will fit over them.  But I love them and I'm grateful that they work and allow me to run!

 A few hours after getting home, I was off to our stake music festival to perform in my ward choir, and I did get up Saturday morning and ran 10 miles.  I felt great!  My thumb and jaw still hurt, but they are getting better.  What a weird day!  Things like this always remind me how fast life can change.  One second, I was going about my normal, boring work day.  The next second, I was on my way to the ER.  I'm so grateful when my life and the lives of my friends and family are normal and boring.  I'm also grateful for Holly!  She's such a great friend and coworker.  She took me to the ER and sat in the waiting room while I was monitored and took me home afterward.  Bless her!  I'm also very grateful for thumbs.  You don't realize how much you use those little guys until one is hurt!