Skies The Limit

Ready, set, train!

If you would have asked me to run ANY distance 3 years ago, I honestly would have chuckled. In fact, several of my friends in San Antonio would religiously go to the gym. My comment would always be, work out some for me!! (as I sat and watched television munching on junk) Seriously! After moving to Arizona I found that running was a hobby by several girls not to mention doing sprint triathlons. I never in a million years would have considered something of this nature until I met the women in my ward. My neighbor Tiffany lured us into running the Pinetop 10k. She recently moved down to the valley after living their for over 15 years. So, several weeks ago and we began to train by meeting at 5:30am Tuesday/Thursday mornings.

Minnie, Aprel, Martha, Jenny and Tiffany

We headed out Friday afternoon up to blissful, beautiful Pinetop, AZ. I will say the windy road about did me in on the way up. I was extremely carsick. We arrived about 9pm and settled into our rooms. Tiffany's home in the mountains is super charming. I was lucky enough to score one of her older daughters rooms.

Cooler weather makes it that much harder to crawl out of bed, especially at 6 in the morning. Despite my body calling for bed, I managed to pull myself to get up. We headed out around 7am to the start of the race, and yes, it was a chilly 47 degrees!

Brrrrr!

I will say I was a little nervous knowing in advance there would be hills and 7000 degrees of high altitude mixed in for the race. You can't argue how breathtaking our run was though. We had blue skies beyond the eye could see and the smell of pine trees was super refreshing.

First few miles

The first few miles was a gradually downhill. I got a little lost since I wasn't really running in any sort of pack. Once the race began we all separated running our own speeds. As I was heading on the first leg of the race it was blocked off with orange cones. Unbenounced to me part of the orange cones wasn't intended for the route, but to simply warn cars there were runners coming. Luckily, I only got off course for a few hundred feet and realized where to turn. The last part of the race was the toughest (at least for me). It was a pretty steep hill which made you feel like you were running in place. I still managed to come in around 57 minutes, which is a little slower than my last 10K, but factoring in the climate and hills, still not too shabby.

We all finished within 15 minutes of each other. There were only about 60 runners total, since Pinetop is a small town. We headed over to Eddie's (aka Eddie Basha) for breakfast after the race. We couldn't resist taking a photo since one of the guy's in our stake owns this place.

I am by no means a breakfast gal. In fact, on most occasion I won't even eat breakfast. However, I succomed by pressure and ordered some of the tastiest hashbrowns, bacon and toast I ever ate. It was so yummy!

The best part was it was cowboy style cookin' You definitely felt like you were getting a home cooked meal. Our little running pack has already set a goal to run a triathalon in Decemeber and then we all committed to run a relay race in the end of February. It's a 180 miles that involves 12 people on a team. Have you ever heard of the Ragner's Relay? I am not sure what I am getting myself into, but I am super excited!! Let the training begin!