The Running Grammarian : A marathon? Are you crazy?!?

Ok, so I haven't written in, well, about a month. I have a hard to finding things to write about, which is weird, because I run all the time. Well, here goes.
The biggest, latest, and greatest news is that in a sudden fit of insanity (really not sure where the insanity came from) I actually signed up for the St. George Marathon, which is held the first weekend of October. Now, a few weeks after I signed up, I am really scared and nervous. The main thing that I am nervous about is that I still have to wait until May 12 to find out if I am able to get it.

If you don't live in Washington County (basically St. George) you have to enter the lottery, which is where a computer randomly selects runners to get in. The good news is that in the past the St. George Marathon has only allowed about 5,800 runners; however, this year they increased the number of runners to 7,800. This gives me a better chance of getting in.

Since I signed up for the marathon, I have run farther than I ever had before; I have had runs of 14 miles, 12 miles, and 10 miles since then. As I write this, I am planning to go 13 in the morning. I even have a great route planned for a 16 mile run in 2 weeks. I actually am having fun planning routes for my long runs that are taking me where I have never run before. I will update this here blog as I increase my mileage in preparation for the marathon.

This week has been my spring break, which is so nice, and we have done some fun things. This morning we went on a hike at Red Rock called the Calico Tanks hike. This was moderate (yeah right!) 2.5 mile round trip hike. We parked in the Sandstone Quarry parking lot and the trailhead was right off the parking lot. We started on the hike down a groomed trail, through a couple of washes, and then up the mountain. Holy crap! We went right up the mountain, scrambling up huge boulders, walking around huge boulders, sliding down huge boulders. Did I mention this was straight up the mountain and over huge boulders? It really wasn't too bad, except my 3 year old son was walking and I had my 1 year old in the backpack on my back (he weighs 25 pounds).

Despite the huge boulder adventure, we made it to the top with incredible views of Vegas. My 3 year old son walked/hiked/scrambled the entire way up! He was awesome! He had fun pretending we were ninjas and the boulders were ninja boulders and he did the entire thing by himself. Look at the pictures below to see how much fun we had.

If you don't want to run, which I would highly recommend, then walk, hike, anything, just get moving! The first step is taking a step!