Still living the life of Lucille Ball

This past week has been truly crazy. Tyler has been trying to do a booth with a local interior designer for the Home Show on Friday. Several things put him way behind, so I spent a bit of time trying to help. In an effort to finish, Wednesday night I got 3 hours of sleep and on Thursday night I never went to sleep at all (Tyler's schedule was WAY worse, of course). I was scheduled to run in the Wasatch Woman Love Your Body 10K race on Saturday. On Friday morning, I broke the news to the girls that I wouldn't be able to do it. Between the crazy work load and the fact that I've been helping Tyler begin running and he is only up to 2 miles, I just wasn't prepared. The girls were SO disappointed! Our neighbor is the editor of Wasatch Woman Magazine and was in charge of the race. She had offered to let the girls do some volunteer work with the kids area- face painting, helping with the bounce house, etc. Savannah had also invited a friend so that they could get some service hours for Young Women. I decided that if I was able to get a nap, I would do it anyway and just not worry about my time.

Well, I didn't get much of a nap, but I felt a little better by Friday afternoon and decided to go for it. We woke up really early because, since Tyler still wasn't done- I would have to take all of the kids. We picked up Savannah's friend and were off. When we were almost to Thanksgiving Point (about 25 minutes from home), I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten my timing chip and my number. I couldn't believe it! At this point, it probably would have been smarter to just give up, but I figured it was just another of those "Lucy" moments, and took it in stride. I quickly dropped off the kids and headed back home. Since there had been some construction and a bit of traffic, I knew there was no way I would be back before the gun went off for the race. Since the 10K started before the 6K, I figured as long as I could get back before they started, I would be okay.

I got back to see all the ladies lined up for the 6K. There were so many people! I think there were something like 1900 in the race. I don't know how many were only doing the 6K, but I had a hard time getting to the front. I finally got up there and yelled to the guys, "I was supposed to do the 10K, can I go?" Gotta love a bunch of women, they all started yelling for me, "GO! You can catch up. You can still win!!" It was pretty hilarious and kind of a fun way to start a race. I knew I needed to hurry so that I could get past all of the walkers for the 10K before we hit the bottleneck of the small trails. It was hard to gauge how fast I was going because I had started so late, I was passing up everyone at the back. By the time we hit the pathway, I still hadn't caught up to the people going about my speed and I was stuck! I was so frustrated, that I had to start pushing people out of the way. Since lots of people wear headphones, a simple, "Excuse me" is pretty useless. I felt so dumb, but my competitive nature just couldn't allow me to start walking in the middle of a race.

When I finally got to the finish line, there was a bit of chaos. A few women beside me said, "How long was that race? My GPS says I only ran 4.75 miles." The path was a bit confusing for the race and it appeared that some people had gotten confused at some point and taken the 6K route. I looked down at my GPS and it said I had run a little over 7 miles. I thought it was weird, but was distracted by the fact that it had taken me just over an hour to run 6 miles. That is the absolute worst time I have EVER had! Even when I was in really bad shape. I figured the lack of sleep must have affected me more than I thought.

I grabbed the kids and we were off to the Home Show to help Tyler for a few more minutes before I had to run the girls to a Young Women activity. Later that day, as I was driving Emmaline to Park City for a soccer game, my neighbor called to ask how I did in the race. I started to explain that I did horrible, hadn't gotten enough sleep, etc. She stopped me to say, "Well, you actually ran 7.1 miles." I just had to laugh. It fit so well with the kind of morning I had. So the good news is, I was running just about as fast as I always do and I ran farther than I have run in a LONG time =)