The next half was my own. I decided last minute to join the Blakey boys at the SOJO half marathon. I wanted to do at least one more half this fall. I presented the idea to Lindsey as a no-brainer. They offer free entry to the top 3 finishers in each age group. I reasoned that based on last years results I would be 1st place in my age division. Well, those slow pokes from last year didn't show up this year, or maybe the word got out about the free entry. In either case, some fast people, I'm sure they train for Nike professionally, showed up to race this year. Luckily I was able to finish 3rd in my age group and therefore still achieved my goal. I can only imagine how long I would have been doing dishes and scrubbing toilets for Lindsey to pay off the debt otherwise.
I don't currently have a picture of my finish, but you can pretend it's inserted here if you want.
Lastly, the whole. You may wonder what this "whole" is. Well, after my half this last Saturday we travelled virtually the WHOLE state of Utah from north to south. That may sound like a bit of hyperbole...and it is, but it's not as far from the truth as we might like it to be. We headed down to Moab to visit Canyonlands National Park. We had all of our camping gear, and figured if for some reason we couldn't find a camp spot in the dark, we would just take a hotel for a night and find a spot the next day. Much to our dismay we found that an extra 1500 (or more!) camp sites and/or hotel rooms were taken because there was a half marathon in Moab on Sunday. After cursing the fact that we are too cheap to pay for the data plan on an Iphone and furiously calling any and everyone we knew, we ended up driving all the way to Monticello for a room at the Monticello Inn. It seemed nice enough, although a survey of the area the next morning indicated the town was much smaller than it appeared at night, they must have had 3 street lights for every building in town. Nonetheless, this gave us the opportunity to visit the southern end of the park that we otherwise likely wouldn't have seen. The park was quite enjoyable and we loved all of the comments and looks we got trudging along the trails with Gavin in tow. He loved it! Everything except the time in the car seat it took to get there!
