Salt Lake 10 Miler

We drove up to Bountiful Friday afternoon to spend the weekend with my in-laws. The race started at 7:30 the next morning, so we took Grandma Catlin out to dinner and then headed to bed around 9:30pm after checking the weather. We realized we could be running in a blizzard with horrible winds, I prayed that it wouldn't be horrible and it could have been worse. We didn't sleep well at all and woke up around 4:30 am to get some oatmeal in before we left for the race. We drove to "This is the Place Monument" and waited for our friends to arrive to give us a lift to the starting line.

The run started at Little Dell Recreation area. The course went up and over Little Mountain down Emigration Canyon and finished at "This is the Place" monument. The map below shows the course:

Once we got to the start, we tried to stay warm and stayed in the car as long as possible. The video below Matthew took just after the gun went off:

The roads were wet, icy and snowy and the wind was brutal! The first 2.25 miles had a fairly steep incline before we hit the summit and started on the downhill. There were some parts of the incline with the wind blowing 30mph you just felt like you were running/jogging in place. It was awful, and I was only averaging a 12-13 minute mile for those first few miles. My IT Band started hurting soon after the start and I had to walk it out a few times. I started feeling pretty good once we headed downhill although I still felt some pain in my knees.

My pace was getting better and I finally felt like I was getting into the groove. At mile 8, I stopped for water. The stop was less than 60 seconds, but when I started running again the pain was excruciating. I was crying and whimpering. Matthew looked at me and asked if we need to stop and go get the medic, but I was determined to finish. It took another half mile to get into the groove again and mentally get past the pain, but I crossed the finish line hand in hand with Matthew with tears streaming down my face. It was an emotional run, frustrated I was feeling so much pain and wishing my body would have kept up with me, we finished slower than I would have liked, but we finished. Our time was: 1:41:00.06.

I went to the doctor this morning. I have Iliotibial Band Syndrome. The doctor gave me some stretches to do and I purchased a Foam Roller to help work out some of the inflammation. He said I should start seeing some improvement in the next week or so. I plan on doing some lighter training for the next couple of weeks. I am still looking forward to running the Provo City Half Marathon on May 1st and determined to get there no-matter-what!!!

More Crafting...

For Christmas 2009, I decided to take a "homemade" approach. We made most of our gifts and I had a lot of fun doing it. In Matthew's family, we draw names and I drew my sister-in-law, Jenny. As soon as I picked her name I knew what I wanted to make for her. I bookmarked this tutorial in my Google Reader from the fabulous Sew, Mama, Sew! website and was waiting for the perfect person to use it on. While making the Car CD Holder for Jenny, I also made two for me (one for each visor in my car). The tutorial was very easy and I was excited about the finished product, Jenny was too! I paired the gift with a g.c. to iTunes! :D

The next gift was for my nephew, Drew. I found also found these two patterns on Sew, Mama, Sew! The Toddler Backpack is already a favorite of mine! I decided to use flannel for the main fabric and canvas for the straps. The tutorial was easy to use, the only difficult part was adding Velcro to the front of the backpack and turning the straps after stitching them (always the most time consuming)! Drew looks pretty adorable with his backpack and I hear it makes for a great church bag!

My sister-in-law, Jill's birthday is Christmas day, so I decided to make her a Linen Apron. I thought it would be a cute idea to scale it down and make a matching one for my niece, Grace, so I did, with the help of my mother-in-law. This pattern was really difficult to follow as the measurements were in centimeters, so the conversion was difficult, but they turned out so adorable!! Both have hand-stitched embroidery and we used a linen-looking fabric instead of real linen because linen wrinkles so easily. Grace's is a little different from Jill's, but they match which I think is just so darling!

The last two projects were some of my favorite and most time consuming. I made two different magnet boards with matching magnets. I bought the boards from Robert's Crafts and then sanded and painted them. For the magnets, I used the following tutorial. I had made magnets before, but this time I sealed them with decoupage to help seal the paper to the rock, so the heaviness of the magnet doesn't rip the paper off the rock. The first set of pictures is the magnet board I made for my mother-in-law. They will be building a home this summer, my plan is to get pictures printed for the board for Mother's day. The second set of pictures was for my family in AZ, I loved getting the picture printed and organizing them on the board.

Overall, I think the projects turned out well! I'll definitely be making them for my family and home someday!