Ogden Half

My semi-famous brother Mike, who can tell you lots of awesome stuff about Ogden and why Ogden is awesome, used his authority and let me get a late entry into the Ogden half-marathon. I'm not marathon material. Only half of it actually. Anyways, for training I did a few 8 mile runs, one 14 mile trail run, some random miles in between and that's about it. I was undertrained for certain. I wanted to run under 1:40 which is a 7:30/mile pace. Luckily, I spotted one of my neighbors from my younger years and we ran the first 10 miles together. Then, I said "adios" as my side-stitch and lack of training finally caught up to me and my neighbor kept going. My last 5k took about 28 minutes. As Phil Liggett would say, I was "wearing the mask of pain."

I really faded towards the end of the race and got passed by grips of people in the last couple of miles. It was similar to losing touch on a hill climb when riding. You see them ahead of you, but you know there's nothing you can do to catch up because your already at your top speed. With a 1/2-3/4 mile left, I was at 1:35 or so, so I thought 1:40 was a cinch. The finishing straight is so long, you can see the finish line for about 7 blocks. All the while, the clock is ticking. As 1:40 was approaching, I realized my goal was in jeopardy. The PA announcer had me hustling to the line with his "You have 30 more seconds to finish under 1:40!" motivation speech. I hustled, crossed the line at 1:39:57, and had to bend over because I thought I was going to puke! I think that was about the best I could do on Saturday. Maybe I need to find some hobbies that I can be good at.


Jami did the ogden marathon this last Saturday and PR'd. She did awesome and ran a great race. I'm sure she'll post about it on the family blog.

Should I take up cyclocross?


Maybe some ironing while track cycling.


Or running with bulls in pamplona?



I'll probably just stick with my usual hobbies and be mediocre at all of them.