Hobble Creek Half

Today, for the first time, I ran the Hobble Creek Half Marathon. For those who have never heard of it, you get dropped off up in the canyon, and then you run back down. I was told by previous runners, that it was awesome, there are no hills, its straight downhill, so it’s a fast awesome course. This is a lie. A super, super lie. There are hills. There is one at like, mile 11 that is almost straight uphill. It was awful. Anyway, we had to be in Mapleton at 5:00 for the buses to take us up. If you missed the buses, you missed the race. So I set the alarm for 4:00 ON A SATURDAY to wake up. I went to bed at 9:30, on a Friday night, I felt like a 90 year old. We got up there, and wasted the next two hours. You read that right, they dropped us off 2 hours early, and we just had to wait there, for 2 hours. I brought a jacket, I expected the chilliness. Here’s PJ and I before the race:

Then the race started. We were maybe 3 minutes in when I took off my jacket. It wouldn’t sit well on my hips, so I threw it to the side of the road, knowing I would never get it back. I did yell ‘sorry’ as I did so, though. RIP Jacket. Then the race. It was a little harder than I thought it would be. The unexpected hills sucked, then as I got to mile 11, I was hot, I was thirsty, and I had had enough. So at this point, I started to pick up my pace, because I was sick of running and just wanted to be done. As PJ was a little behind me, I just started yelling about how I hated this race, I hated this course, I hated the mountain, I hated the heat, I hated that we woke up so early, and I just about lost it. I just kept going, faster and faster, until I finished the race. I didn’t look super grump coming in, though, and that’s what counts.

I even did a thumbs up! Then I finished, and I had a hard time stopping and walking, it felt so unnatural. I made my way over to the water station, where they were handing out WARM CUPS OF WATER! Yes, to those of us who had run 13.1 miles, we were given warm water. It was awful. I made my way over to the food, and picked up some cold watermelon, and finally found some cold water. We wandered around, cooling down, and finally, felt better about not running anymore. It was glorious. Plus we were really hot and tired at this point. I just wanted to nap in a cool bath of water.

But we survived, and that’s the important thing of the day. Plus, I got my sweet medal.