Two weeks until the Des News Marathon.....

Since I went to the Philippines in February, I told Craig that I would not run my usual marathons this year and it has been a good break for me. Of course, I haven't taken any time off running just the marathon training. I have planned on running the Deseret News Marathon but wanted to see if I would have time to train. I have never run the Deseret News Marathon and to be honest I have not had the desire because of the difficult course. However, last year I met a Kenyan at the race who encouraged me to run it this year and I promised him that he would see me in the 2009 marathon. So here I am training for another marathon and it is only two weeks away now. I did some recruiting and have two friends who are running it with me. Today we ran our last long run, the 20 miler. Since the marathon is local we were able to run the first 20 miles of the marathon which is so helpful in preparing your body for the day of the race and since I live at the 20th mile of the marathon it worked out just perfect. My alarm went off at 3:50am this morning and I grumbled as I crawled out of bed. As soon as I was ready and out the door to meet my friends, Margaret and Laura, I was excited to get started. It was really dark but by the 4th or 5th mile of our run it started to get light. Thank goodness because I was psyching myself out about the wildlife in the canyon and who we might run into. We did see some deer, a porcupine and a chipmunk but that was it. The canyon was beautiful and so peaceful. We were talking and having a great time and ran right past our first water stop. Ooops! Anyway we made it and actually it ended up being 20.8 miles. Now we get to taper the next couple of weeks and then marathon day on the 24th will be here. Yeah, I am so excited as it has been about 9 months since my last marathon and I am itching to experience the accomplishment of completing a marathon.