So 7 o'clock on Saturday morning we were up and headed to the Dee Event Center in Ogden praying that we would live through the tramatic event that was ahead of us. We got to the ice sheet and I decided I didnt want to carry my whole set of keys, so I just took off the key pad and hid the rest of they keys in my car thinking that would be more simple. So we headed up to get our numbers and shirts, walking through a crowd of people stretching and looking like they knew exactly what they were doing, I knew this was going to be an interesting experience. I stepped up to the table and said my name and the lady looked through the box and found my little packet of goodies that I wasn't sure what exactly to do with. Then she said "I don't think we have any of the small shirts left, is this the only race you are going to be doing?" and of course the answer was "Yes." So she thought for a second and looked behind her grabbing a light, black jacket and handed it to me. This jacket was different from what David had received and we noticed that there were a few other people in these jackets and we realized that those who did multiple races received these, so now I looked like I had to know what I was doing. So we went out to an open space and I started to stretch because well, thats what everyone seemed to be doing. We also noticed that everyone had a little orange square attacted to the shoe laces and we realized that we also had a little orange square in our "packet o' goodies" so we decided thats what we needed to do.
Slowly it got closer and closer to being 8 so we decided we should take our extra stuff back out to the car, I reached into my pocket for the keypad that I had thought was so smart to just bring it, and it wasn't there. David and I searched the area and I retraced our steps and I couldn't find it. Someone noticed that we were looking for something and he started helping us, I told him it was just the keypad because I didnt want to carry the whole set of keys and he said that now it would be harder to find as just the small keypad. So my smart idea wasnt so smart after all. Luckily the keypad was found and David took the extra stuff out to the car and decided to hide the keypad in my wheel well just so we didn't lose it on the route.
Then someone got on a loud speaker letting us know that we needed to head over to the starting line and that the race was about to start. As we got to the starting line David and I got our iPods ready for the long haul with our "workout music". The horn sounded and the race began. We started running and about 5 minutes into the race I was tired and slowed down telling David to keep going and I'd see him later. Everyone passed me and eventually I thought i HAD to be in last place. I realized this was going to just be a nice walk to go on, it wasnt too cold and everything looked so pretty. I got to about 2.5 miles and people began passing me again so I must not have been in last place, then the pacer came. Now some of you might not know what the pacers job is, her job is to volunteer to be the last person in the race and make sure everyone was okay as she went along. So her and I walked together the rest of the race. We talked about a lot of things, I found out she is also a cosmetologist (imagine that) and that she is a masseuse. We talked about so much from the church to how she met her husband to racing.
Well once we got to mile 5 we met up with 2 other women and began talking with them and we got closer and closer to the Dee Events Center. Finally it was in view and I began running again. As I rounded the corner into the parking lot I saw David walking ahead of me over by the end of the race, and he turned in time to watch me finish the race and cross the finish line in front of the other 2 women we had met up with, I WASN'T LAST AND WE LIVED! Come to find out David had been finished for about 30 minutes and had actually headed back up the race to find me and he got to the police officer who was suppose to be at the end of the race (and he was a ways in front of us) and he said that there was noone else behind him. So David headed back thinking maybe he had missed me, or I had come back early (which was very likely). But he still got to see me finish.
David finished 203 at 56:46.6 minutes and I finished 371 at 1:28:48.2, there were 373 people in the race. We are very glad that we didn't die and that we both actually finished.
I had the pacer that I became friends with take this picture of us after the race. This was a great experience and I am glad that I did it, next time I'll have to train better.
It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it!
