My Weekend at the Winter Sun 10K

This was my 6th year going to Moab's Winter Sun 10K run.  It's always such a fun, fun time!  This time we had 13 of us that went - although one of the ladies drove up the day of the race and headed back soon after.  Usually we just stay for one night, but a few of the gals wanted two nights and so that was an extra treat this year!

Seven of us left on Friday morning to go to the temple on our way there.  Monticello (where our temple is) isn't the usual route to go to Moab, but once there it's just a quick hour to Moab.  We had some blizzardy snow and snow-packed roads over Dallas Divide (the pass that takes you to Telluride), but other than that it was pretty smooth driving.  The temple was nice and we were able to have some of us do initiatories and the others did sealings.

We got to our super-cute place in Moab and unpacked.  We then went for a walk on the River Trail.  It was beautiful.

Brittany and Sarah in the back.  Kandace, Heather, Anna, and Jeni next.  Me in front.

The rest of the group came later that night - some around 8pm and the last two around 10pm.  We had a good night eating our yummy homemade chicken noodle soup, chatting, and watching a crazy running-documentary to get us all inspired for the next day.  :)

The race went well on Saturday!  One gal from our group, Marnae, took 1st in her age division - so cool!  My time was 51:59.  I was 60th out of 224 runners, the 19th female out of 143, and 10th out of the 47 runners in my age-group.  The coolest was the 87 year-old lady runner who came in at one hour and 27 minutes.  She looked fantastic!  I told her I wanted to be just like her when I grow up.  Because I'm original and funny like that.  She chatted with us for a few minutes and that was pretty grand.  I won a raffle prize in the give-away and that was super-exciting - although the actual prizes (some energy/electrolyte drink and a funny-fitting hat) were less so.

Our before-race picture. Back row: Brittany Philips, Jeni Osorio, Heather Oman, Kandace Booth, and Heather Evans.  Front-ish row:  Nichole Taylor, Anna Archer, Molly Shockley, myself, Sarah Bugarin, and Marnae Woodland.

Yay, I finished in under 52 minutes (by 1 second, ha!)!  That wasn't necessarily my goal until a hundred feet out I saw I was pretty close.  So I stepped it up, passed an older woman, and got my 51:59 time.  :)

 Marnae on the podium!  I'm friends with her - I felt cool!  :)

After lunch a group of us went out to hike Delicate Arch.  It's been a way long time since I had done it - it was as impressive as ever!

 So amazing!

Awesome.

We enjoyed dinner at a Mexican restaurant that night and it was delicious and fun!

El Carro Loco.

We had a great night of games, chatting, and snacking.  It was super fun!

I headed out on my own that morning - leaving the condo by 6:15am.  I was meeting my mother (shhhh, my kids - especially Jonas - don't know!) near Price, UT to get a special something my parents had picked up for us (i.e., Jonas) in Utah.  The weather was slightly crummy and I drove through some really snowy conditions.  My mother had some snow down Provo Canyon, but after that it was pretty clear for her.  We met at a church (I was planning on going to a 9am sacrament meeting . . . unfortunately it was 10am stake conference that day for them and because of the snowfall coming down, I decided to just head back home rather than wait another hour . . .).  We transferred the goods from my mom's car to my car, and then we both headed back our separate ways.  It was fun to see my mother for like 5 minutes!  She's pretty cute and awesome to drive out all that way and back!  My mom had even better roads for her trip home.  I had worse roads for about the first third of my drive, but then it finally cleared up.

Anyways, another awesome time in Moab with a bunch of awesome ladies.  Lucky me.