On their website, Deseret News Classic touts itself as the “oldest road race in Utah and the fourth oldest marathon west of the continental divide.” Which for some reason, led me to believe that this was a well run and organized event. Also? The price. After participating in 9 half marathons, I can tell you with some certainty that the price of the race is the greatest indicator of the type of event you should expect.
Alas, that line of thinking was shattered as this race was $95 (more expensive than Drop13 AND SLC Half) and easily the worst organized event I’ve ever participated in.
The upside this year, was that instead of waiting at the top of the mountain for 90 minutes freezing before the race started, we got on the last bus up the mountain and were dropped off five minutes before the start. This is because they have a REALLY bizarre way of organizing the bus pick-ups in that they don’t organize it at all. So you have to nomadically wander from bus group to bus group hoping that they can squeeze you onto the next bus that arrives. And when that doesn’t work, you try again.
Bella loves being able to go in and out as she pleases, so the backyard has slowly been destroying the Everything Is Awful thought bubble she has hanging out over her head. This has also been a huge improvement to Chad’s sleep schedule, since for the last 4+ years, every few nights or more, Bella wakes him up to take her outside so she can either pee or sniff all the grass on the property. I would be more than happy to take her outside, but she doesn’t wake me up. Probably because I could sleep through an earthquake.
Disney has started incorporating challenges into their runDisney events because running isn’t crazy enough. For instance, The Goofy Challenge, is a half marathon on Saturday and a marathon on Sunday. And if you think that sounds too easy then there’s The Dopey Challenge which is a 5k on Thursday, 10k on Friday, half marathon on Saturday, and marathon on Sunday.
You see? There ARE crazier people than me!
The Pixie Dust Challenge will sound essentially normal in comparison; it involves running a 10k on Saturday and a half marathon on Sunday, which is nothing new for me. Knowing what it entailed should have made me wiser. It didn’t. This time Chad joined in on the challenge. Because I’m wearing him down, obviously.
For the first few years of cohabitation, I tried to mind my own space and not force organizing on Chad. I’ve always been super aware that not everyone does things the way I do, and THAT’S OK! But sometimes I notice that Chad is doing something… inefficiently… and I keep quiet about it to the point that I want to kill someone. Because I lied, it’s not ok that people do things the wrong way, it just isn’t.
Last year I ran six half marathons which is… a lot, especially for someone who hadn’t ever run a half marathon before. For 11 months I felt like I was constantly training for my next event. After my last event in November, I decided to slow down a little and wait until January 1st before actively training for the next race: the 2015 Salt Lake Half Marathon alllllll the way in April.
It was an insanely mild winter in SLC, so I was able to train outside most of the time. When we did have a little rain or lingering inversion, I did speed training on the treadmill. It was definitely different from having to commute to the Kearns Oval three times a week like last year… #contributingtotheinversion.
When I sat down and thought about it, I realized that I don’t have a deep need to buy a crummy house in a perfect neighborhood just to spend every cent we have and twenty years or more making it into something stripped of horrible floor plans or ill-advised 90s renovations. I may be handy but I don’t relish the thought of pulling up linoleum and carpeting or coercing family members to come help tile our bathroom just to save a few hundred bucks just so I can blog about it with pretty “after” pictures.
Almost three years ago, I pulled out our basic builder closet and installed an elfa closet. At the time we didn’t have The Container Store in Salt Lake City so I personally designed the space using their online tool, which is specifically for reach-in closets. We have a walk-in closet, while admittedly smaller, definitely had more […]
We cleaned out so much stuff that an entire cabinet, which was previously being used as a BBQ/small appliance cabinet, is now able to house larger cookware and our cookbook collection. The cookbooks that were previously in the office instead of the kitchen. There was a good reason for cookbooks to be outside of the kitchen: we always did our menu planning in the office. But my heart feels happy that they are now in the kitchen. Until we move.
We participated in three 10ks and six half marathons across four states and two countries; and ran in six states if you add Colorado and Illinois just for fun (no official events).
