Racing/Volunteering!

Lately it seems our weekends have been booked with races Brian has signed up for. And since I don't have anything exciting going on in my personal life I just follow him where ever he goes. In the last month Brian has had 3 races. 2 down in the Provo area and 1 in Salt Lake. And all of these races start bright and early in the morning so luckily for the Provo races we were able to spend the night at Brian's grandma's house.

 On May 26th Brian ran the Timp Trail Half Marathon. It was held a little ways up Provo Canyon.

This is the elevation gain and loss of the race.  

Brian took 9th place overall and 2nd in his age division. I didn't get to see him come in at the finish line because he was quicker than he estimated. So I got there right after he finished and made him take a picture by the finish line.

Here is his neat finisher medal with his time and placement card.

On June 9th Brian ran the Utah Valley Marathon. The morning of the race we woke up at 3am so Brian could eat before I drove him down to the finish line where hundreds of runners were lined up by 4:15am waiting to be shuttled to the starting line in Wallsburg, up Provo canyon. 

After I dropped him off I hung out at his grandma's house for a little while then I headed up to mile 5 of the race where I had signed up to volunteer at an aid station. I was assigned to be there at 5:45am. I needed something to do while he was running and I got a neat shirt for volunteering.

 At this aid station we had powerade, water and porta potties. One of the porta potties had fallen over the night before so one of the other volunteers took a moment to meditate before the runners arrived. :)

The race started at 6am and the first runners came through our station about 31 minutes later. They were intense and kind of intimidating.

 Brian came through a little while after that. We were so swamped with runners and trying to fill powerade cups that I didn't notice what time it was when he came through and I was barely able to snatch a photo of his backside as he rushed by. He's the one in the white shirt without long socks.

It was really neat to see him in the middle of his race. The last runner came through our station at about 7:30am so after a little clean up we were out of there by 7:45am. I think clean up was the hardest part. Bending over is getting harder and harder for me these days. :) Once we were done I headed down to the finish line and I passed Brian around mile 18. He is such a strong runner, it amazes me.

The finish line was in downtown Provo at the Marriott. I got there a little before 9am and found a pretty good spot to wait for Brian to come through. He gave me an estimate that he would finish somewhere between 9 and 9:30am. I'm not very familiar with marathon times so I didn't realize how fast he would have to run to make it in that time. After about 20 min of waiting he appeared at the end of the shoot within the time frame he had estimated. It was so fun to see him and everyone around me helped me cheer for him as he ran by. I think he was a little confused when people he didn't know were yelling out his name and cheering for him.

His end time ended up being 3 hrs 19 min. He really wanted to make the Boston-qualifying time of 3 hrs 10 min but it just didn't work this time. I reassured him that it was ok since this was his first marathon ever. Crazy boy! Here is another neat medal to add to his growing collection.

On June 16th we both volunteered for the Wasatch Back Ragnar Relay. A team from our ward wanted Brian to run on their team but since he just ran the a marathon he decided it wasn't a good idea for his body to run two races so close together. So we told them we would be 2 of the volunteers they needed to provide for their team. It ended up being really fun and quite easy. We were assigned to an aid station located just outside of Coalville. Of course I didn't get a picture of the aid station we were at or the other  really cool volunteers we were with. The only thing I captured from the experience was a video of a cow mooing. Exciting right? I won't bore you with that video.

On June 23rd Brian ran another race. This one was called the Wahsatch Steeple Chase. It was a 16 1/2 mile trail race that started at Memory Grove and went up City Creek Canyon. The runners climbed about 4,000 feet in elevation. I won't go too much into the details. All you need to know is that it was a hard race. Here he is waiting for the race to begin. And Luke is standing next to him. He's probably yawning because it is 6 in the morning on a Saturday.

He fits in so well with this crowd.

And I actually got a picture of him crossing the finish line at Memory Grove with a time of 2 hrs 53 min. It's kind of hard to tell that it's the finish line because it's not marked and there are a lot of people just standing around.

I think that is the last of his races for a while. Besides a 10K with his family this weekend. I think the next big race he is planning on is the Big Cottonwood Canyon Marathon that is taking place on Sept. 22nd. We'll see how that goes.

And I'll leave you with a few more pictures.

34 weeks! August 5th is coming fast.

And yes I feel huge.

I'm not sure how to describe this photo. I'll just let you enjoy it.