Laura's Birthday and Marathon

(Sorry we don't have any pictures, we were using up a disposable camera, that we discovered a few weeks ago. No clue what the other pictures on the camera are from!)

My 24th birthday was on Friday. We headed up to Layton and carbo-loaded for dinner. Dave made a double-decker funfetti cake. He gave me a few things for the kitchen, a children's book, and a Nike plus Ipod, that measures how far you run. The only problem with it is Dave thought it would work with his Ipod classic, but it only works with a Nano. So, we haven't quite decided what to do yet. Any ideas on where we can win a free Ipod nano? It seems like noone ever has to buy them, they're always giving them away!
We went to bed, and got up at what felt like 10 minutes later! We had to get up at 3:30 so we could drive up to Logan for the race. We saw Megan and Jordan Jones before we got on the busses, so we rode the busses up with them. Dave walked over to the busses with me and Popcan, then took the car and tried to sleep for about 2 hours before going golfing. The race started at 7:00 up the canyon. The first half was down the canyon. It was pretty because the leaves were changing colors. The first half wasn't too bad, but we had to stop twice at the port-a-potty. After we got out of the canyon, it was really hard! It just seemed to wind in and out of neighborhoods. Popcan pretty much dragged me along the whole way. Miles 15-19 were the hardest. I had no idea how I was going to run for 10 more miles! I just kept thinking, "It would kind of be nice if Popcan would just go ahead, then I could walk and go at my own pace." But, he stuck with me the whole time, always just a little bit ahead. It was good to run with him, even though I didn't think so at the time! The hardest part was stopping at the drink stations, then start running again! I just had to talk myself through the last half, saying "only a 10K left, now only a 5K." It was totally a mental game.
We saw Dave at about 25 miles, and he took a picture of us, then Sharla a little bit later. She ran about a mile with us, and it was energizing to see her. Despite my legs that felt like they were going to fall off, I was able to sprint at the end and beat Popcan by about a half a second. I was so glad to be done. I was so disappointed though because they were out of chocolate milk! I think it was the hardest marathon I had ever done! (that or I just can't remember how hard they actually are!)

I'm just glad that I didn't look like this at the end of the race:)

Subject: Sometimes it is worth sacrificing getting your best time to stop for a minute