Brady and I have a thing for running. I’m not good at it. I’m not even fast…and it’s hard to say that I enjoy the act itself. But I’m addicted to the after-effect, the adrenaline rush from crossing the finish line, the endorphins, the way my legs feel at the end of 5, 10, or 26.2 miles under the beating sun. I guess you could say it’s my drug of choice.
That being said, we decided to tackle the 2010 St. George Marathon…and the months of training that necessarily precede it. It was a busy summer. Having run St. George a couple times before, I figured I would be used to the training by now…but it never gets any easier. It’s still hard to get out of bed and run 15 miles on a Saturday.
One thing that made it a little easier was signing up for other “pacer” races leading up to the marathon. We kicked off the running season with the Ogden Half Marathon.
It was a family affair. My mom and cousin ran the half with us, and my dad and sister ran the full marathon. Great race, mostly downhill (which is always appreciated).
That was in May. Shortly after that race…Brady moved out to California for his internship with Apple. I had to stay here for work…so, without a running buddy, we had to resort to being each other’s coaches via phone (and we went running whenever I went out to visit him). Brady did a 100 mile fitness challenge with some of his coworkers…he had to run 100 miles in 6 weeks, and got a sweet shirt and bragging rights when it was all over. He had a pretty easy time meeting and exceeding that quota, with all the marathon training he was doing.
Meanwhile, back in Utah, I signed up for a mid-summer half marathon, to keep myself up to speed on my training. I ran the Hobbler Half (down Hobble Creek Canyon) in July, and ended up running my best half marathon time.
Fast forward a couple months…Brady came back to Utah, and we kept training…and those Saturday long runs just kept getting longer. The week before the marathon…we decided to do something a little different for our weekend run…
This is the Dirty Dash. It was a 10K with obstacles, water, and a lot of mud. This is not a race. It’s a bunch of grownups going back to the days of childhood when it was okay to get this dirty. And it’s awesome. When you’re not climbing over 6-foot walls or slogging through a knee-deep swamp, you’re sliding down a slip-and-slide into a mud pit or army-crawling through…well, more mud.
So we finally made it to the weekend of the St. George marathon. We had a blast…in an ironically painful, exhausting sense. Brady said it best when he said it was the hardest thing he’s ever done. Somehow we managed to keep up with each other at the beginning, pull each other along through the middle, and finally drag each other across the finish line.
And we’ve got the pictures to prove it…
Yes, there’s something addicting about crossing that finish line and feeling like all you can do is collapse in a heap on the pavement. Which is almost what happened…we made it onto the grass before we collapsed. But we did it, and we did it together. And it’s the best feeling in the world.
Time to start planning for next year…
