Phoenix Half Marathon!

  On March 1st, Caitlin and I ran the Phoenix Half Marathon!  It was my first half marathon and Caitlin's third.  We started preparing for it informally a while ago.  We would run a 4 mile loop here in our neighborhood and sometimes do the 6 mile loop.  We went to San Diego a couple times and ran 8 miles with Caitlin's mom and her friend since they were preparing for a half marathon in February and we also ran a 10 mile run with them.  Running there was really fun because it was around a lake which was different than just running along the street for a long time!  Then, when the race was getting closer, we ran our 6 mile loop and our 4 mile loop in one run!  That's basically the extent of our training.  Once, on a run by myself on the 6 mile loop a dog started chasing me and I was running really fast!  It was a little scary.  Here's a picture of our Garmin watch from our 10 mile run in Arizona -

The Proof

  When we tried to register for the run, we found out all the available entries for the half marathon were sold out, but Caitlin was able to find 2 entries for sale on Craigslist and we bought them.  So, we couldn't transfer the names to our names, so we ran as Mr. and Mrs. Owens.
  The morning of the race we had to wake up super early, like 3:30am.  Then we went to pick up Kara and her brother Weston because they were running it too!  We were concerned for Weston because he didn't train at all, but he ended up finishing before we did...

Weston and Kara on the bus to the start of the race

Caitlin and me

  The lines for the bathroom were super long and we saw some guys out in a dirt lot just peeing on a wall.  It was kind of funny but weird.  Luckily it was really dark, which actually makes me feel like we were the weirdos trying hard to see people off in the distance peeing on a wall...  Anyway, it started raining kind of hard right before the race started and was raining for the first couple miles.  After that it only rained lightly off and on for the rest of the course.  Our goal was to finish at a better time than 2 hours and 10 minutes.  With a little over a mile left in the race I looked at the watch and saw that it was possible for us to finish barely under 2 hours if we ran really fast.  We were both dead tired, but pushed on and ran the last mile as fast as we could.  We finished the race in 2 hours and 1 minute!  So close!  But we did really well and it was super fun!  Here is our picture after we finished the race -

Here we are with our awesome medals!  My shirt is wet because I was dumping water on my head during the race.  Just sayin...

  The after-race festivities were pretty cool.  There were a bunch of canopies set up with different snacks.  Someone was walking around with a tray of turkey dogs and I was fortunate enough to get one!  While I was eating it, every guy that walked by us asked me where I got it. 
  When we left, we went to Kneaders since that was one of our favorite breakfast places in Utah.  We had to wait though like an hour to get our food and there were no tables, so we took it home.  It was such a dumb breakfast experience that we kind of don't want to go back to Kneaders for a very long time.

That same night, I had agreed to volunteer at the Youth Cultural Celebration for the Gilbert Temple.  I was assigned to work in the parking lot at Costco where a bunch of the youth were planning on being picked up after the celebration was over, but I had to be there for the entire program and help before it started too.  It was very rainy and I was way glad I had an umbrella.  It was cool to be there and hear the talks and songs from the program.  Good job to the Youth!