Here I am at the starting line of the Utah Valley Marathon 10K!! This was my very first race. I ran it with two of my good friends, Becca Rowe, and Mindy Starley but she ran the 1/2 marathon portion of the race. The marathon started up Provo Canyon passed Deer Creek Reservoir and ended at Provo Center Street. My portion of the race started at the Riverwoods and also ended at Provo Center Street. I trained for about 2 months with the longest run in my training program being 8 miles. I assumed that I would run about a 10 minute mile.
I was so excited that morning, can you tell? :D The race started at 7am. I ran with my iphone because I wanted to get pace updates from the MapMyRun app. I decided not to run with music which worked out just fine. It was awesome taking in all of the race surroundings. Seeing the other exhausted 1/2 marathoners, running by the water and food stations, seeing people cheering for us along the way, giving high-fives to little kids, seeing the traffic all stopped for us... It was awesome. I thought I might be bored running down a street I drove so many times while living in Provo during college, but it was quite the opposite. I loved it!
I finished the race in 55:46, running an 8.9 minute mile! I was shocked to find out that my pace was a whole minute less than I thought it would be. I felt great afterwards too! I grabbed a water around the 4 mile mark and drank as I ran. At about 5 miles I realized I wasn't all that tired, so I sped up and passed tons of people for the last mile of the race. It felt awesome. There were TONS of people cheering and ringing cow bells at the finish line so I gave it a good sprint to the finish while Travis barely got it on video. In the end it felt like running a 10K was so easy. But I do remember thinking in the beginning that a 10K race could be exhausting and unpleasant because I wasn't a fan of running. But I think this race has changed my mind, and I will definitely be running another race in the future. :)
