Moab Other Half

Oh How I love the Moab Other Half! It is one of the most beautiful runs I have ever done.
Last weekend I went down to Moab for this race. We also went to Monticello to see my dear friends the Christensen's.

I truly enjoy the drive down there, it is just so majestic. Utah is such a beautiful state.
We drove down to Moab late on Friday night. Then Sat. Morning we drove to Monticello. I love this little town. I spent a bit of time there after I graduated from High School. It is just a fun little place. One stop light and about 1600 people that live there.
We went to Pat's house picked her up and then went to see her husband's grave...he passed away 2 years ago. I love them both Dearly. I didn't get to go to his funeral so it was wonderful for me to be able to go to his grave.

Me and Clyde before he passed away

We drove around the town, saw Pat's kids and grand kid's which was wonderful. Then we went to the gas station to get a drink. We sat down at one of the booth's with all the rest of the locals and had an absolutely wonderful time as everyone that came in said hi to Pat. We also watched the people that were not locals. Pat said that they go in there every day and sometimes will sit for 2 hours or more.
It really made me wish that I lived in a small town!!!!
I found a penny outside of Pat's house...probably one of my favorite penny pictures ever!

Sunday I got up and ran the Moab Other Half Marathon. I got on the bus at 6:30 AM to ride up the start line. This race starts 13 miles up the canyon from Sorrel River Ranch.
One of the things that I love about going to running races is the camaraderie that exists between perfect strangers. I love meeting the different people, hearing where they come from and what they do for a living.
The guy that I rode up the canyon with is from Maryland and his wife is from New Jersey, They moved to Utah because they looked at all cities across the country, had ratings for crime, schools and other things. Salt Lake City statistically is the best place to live in the country....cool to know but I can't believe that they would be willing to move across country not knowing anyone.

The race started at 8 :15 and I honestly felt great as I started out, the temp was great and like I said just a beautiful run. For the first 9 miles every time my running meter would go off I was shocked at the speed I was running. I was about a minute to a minute and a half faster than I normally run and I still felt amazing. I was on pace to destroy my best time and then about mile 9.5 my right knee started hurting and felt like it was going to give out. I was very discouraged but kept running just a lot slower...I finished the race about 2 minutes slower than my best time on a half marathon because I had to slow down so much. I figured out over the next 2 days that it was my IT band acting up. All is better with it now. I have just taken the week off of running to give it a bit of rest.
This race has some of the best swag too. The shirt, goodies, a medal, a key chain and then they have really cool drinking glasses BUT you have to wait in the beer line because they have free beer for all of the runners including the drinking glass. I wanted the glass so I waited in the line and then I thought of Mick (a friend of mine and Tauni's that ran this race with us a few years ago and didn't even talk to us after the race...he just went straight to the beer line) as I dumped the beer on the grass!!!!
What a fun weekend!