Famous Potato Half Marathon

I've been training for the Yellowstone half marathon for the last few months.  Kendi was going to run it with me, but scheduling got in the way, and she needed to back out.  She instead signed up for the half marathon here in May.  The day before the race, I decided to sign up and do it with her.

I rushed downtown for packet pickup.

And the next morning I left my house at 4:45 am to pick up Kendi and go run the race.  We parked downtown, then took a shuttle bus up to the starting point (Lucky Peak).  We had about an hour and a half at the top to stand around and wait.  While waiting, we met two new friends who had come from Washington and were signed up to run the full marathon.

Soon we were off.  I loved the race course!  It followed the river down into Ann Morrison Park.  I tried to just enjoy the morning and took pictures along the way.

I won't lie, it was hard.  Kendi got into her groove and went ahead shortly into the race, so I was on my own for most of it.  I got pretty discouraged around 10 miles, as I realized I wasn't going to finish in my goal time.  But then my new friends, Jen and Kim (the ones we met at the top), caught up with me, and ran with me for a mile and helped me to keep going.  

Scott waited for me at the bridge, just a quarter mile from the finish line, and ran with me through the finish line.  Kendi finished half a minute before me. 

As soon as the race was over, Scott and I rushed home to go to my Dad's speech in the park.  I didn't even have time to shower, I just had to go in my running clothes.  But we made it in time, and my Dad did awesome on his speech, and I got to add another medal to my collection of races.