St George Marathon

Back in April, Russ approached me with the idea of running a marathon. I thought he was crazy....how could we run a marathon? The most we had ever run was 6.2 miles and a marathon is 26.2 miles. I laughed. His idea was that we would enter the lottery for the St. George marathon, and if we were picked we would do it, if we were not picked it wasn't meant to be. I agreed to the terms, thinking there was no way we would be picked. Well, guess what....we found out in May that WE WERE IN! That meant that we had to start training.....in Bakersfield....in the summer!! We found a training program that would have us marathon ready by October, so we began running. And running. And running. We mixed it up with runs on the bike path and on the treadmill. We trained together as much as possible to keep each other motivated. (My favorite part of training was coming home and entering my time and mileage onto the computer. My total training miles were 387!)

We rented a 4 br. condo in St George so that the whole family could come. Allison and Tyler, Grandpa and Grandma Judd, Stacy and Abby joined us as well.

We drove the course the day before to get mentally prepared for what lay ahead....

Rise and shine!! We were up at 4:30 so that we could catch the bus at 5:15 to take us up to the start of the race. I don't think I really ever slept the night before the race, my mind was busy thinking about everything all night long.
There were 7500 runners! We were the last people to cross the starting line. It took 12 minutes from the gun start to when we actually crossed the starting line. We planned it that way so as to avoid being boxed in and trampled!
We are coming up to mile 8, otherwise known as "Veyo Hill". The hill is quite steep and goes on for 1 mile. We walked the whole way to save precious energy for later in the race.
(I'm not running backwards...I just turned around for Russ to take the picture)

Here I am at mile 15...the scenery was beautiful. Russ and I were both feeling really good at this point!

Our children made such cute signs for us!
We came out of the canyon at mile 24, and then ran through town for two miles. I was so energized that first mile when I saw so many people cheering the runners on. Then I came to my family. It was awesome to see them holding signs and encouraging me!
Russ was a little ways behind me. His knee was really hurting!

Ben gave him some love!


The last mile was tough until I rounded the corner and saw the finish line. In the final stretch I saw friends and family cheering for me. It was an awesome feeling to cross the finish line!!

Russ and I had just completed a marathon!!!!

Shawna's official finish time 4:58.

Russ's official finish time 5:07
WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!