Fall Break.

I love that Dixie has Fall Break. It was a much needed break for me. In 2 and 1/2 days I went to Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado, Arches National Park, and climbing on Wall Street right by Arches. It was a great weekend. I left St. George at 3:30am to meet the traveling buddies in Beaver and then off we went to Colorado! It was my first time every there and I enjoyed the little I saw. Black Canyon of the Gunnison is definitely worth the drive. We also tried to go to some hot springs, but they were closed for cleaning for the exact weekend. Oh well..what was a little more driving..? :S
Day 1: First Stop-Green River!

Colorado or Bust!

Black Canyon of the Gunnison

First Climb Ever.

Dinner Time.. in a parking lot. I do enjoy a Mountain House Meal

Good Bye Colorado. Hello Moab.

Day 2:

Lookin' good in the morning..ha

"U-Turn Canyon"





"Midevil Chamber Canyon"
This canyon is short and fun! The last rappel is off of an arch. So amazing..unfortunately it was dark by this time so none of the pics turned out..but Google it.



Day 3:
Last day of the trip, we decided to hit up a little more of Arches National Park, so we went and played at Sand Dune Arch and pretty much just drove through the park, then went climbing for the rest of the day.


Sand Dune Arch.
Wall Street.
This is a famous place in Moab to climb. I tired to take a pic of how many people were climbing, but this is just a small portion of the wall. It would have been worth seeing even if I wasn't a climber.


This is my first legit climb..and there were little kids climbing next to me.. it was a real confidence booster.

Made it!

So happy to say i have accomplished a climb.

This is how I took pictures.

Chad climbing a hard one.

Me attempting to climb the hard one.

I loved this trip, at times I was so annoyed with everyone but the trip was awesome! I feel so lucky to have friends that I can go on trips like this with and just have a good easy going time.

The Marathon.

I finally did it, I ran 26.2 miles. At the beginning of the year running the St. George Marathon was one of my goals and I accomplished it! After a failed attempt at training for it I almost dropped out more than once, but I knew I would have been disappointed in myself and I had great support to keep me motivated. Marathon weekend turned into Thompson Girl Weekend. It made me so happy to have family come down. All us girls went out to dinner, the marathon expo, and then SHOPPING! It was such a fun night and I found some great deals. Marathon morning I woke up at the crack of dawn to run 26.2 miles, sounds a bit insane but it was worth it. The start line was so amazing to see, over 7,000 runners, emergency blankets by the roll and not being able to unroll them fast enough, then fire pits in the ground about every 2 feet and of course music to get you pumped up.

I tried to capture what the starting line was like, but this was the best I could do..

Q, Logan, Me, and Jimmy

Waiting in line for the bathrooms.
And now it was time for to run so I found a pacer to stay with and that kept me going. It was a good group to be with very upbeat and they made it seem so easy because they would run 5 minutes then walk 1 minute, it seemed a bit too easy for me at first then i decided who cares I have to do this for 26 miles. Mile 13 came around and I wanted to be done! (This is why 1/2 marathons are so great) but I was carrying my phone with me and would get periodic texts to keep me going and I definitely needed them. Finally, I made it to the Snow Canyon entrance where my family was there to give me food and I needed them for my motivation to keep going. It was awesome to have them there and also my sister started running with me at that point and she got me quite ahead of my pacer and kept me going, she also had good tasting Gatorade. ;) (Why do races only have the lemon-lime flavor?) But I was so relieved to have her run with me, running with someone i knew made a big difference and more enjoyable. Thanks Steph! She eventually had to bail on me but it was at mile 24..which I came to found out was one of the hardest miles ever! I had such a hard time but slowly but surely mile 25 came around and some friends. Chad ran with me for a little bit and kept me going and then the amazing crowd at the end. Aubrey, Jordan, Matt, Ben, and Dave were there to cheer me on at mile 26, also Athena made me an awesome poster, and Matt and Q. And the crowd in general was just what I needed to get me to the finish. When I got that far though, .2 miles seemed forever long. But after putting myself through hell I finished in 5 hours and 26 minutes and was so happy that I did it and I might do it again! P.S. all my friends that I signed up with had been done for 2-3 hours at this point. ridiculous! Here are a few pictures..my sister-in-law has the ones from the race, i will eventually post some of those especially a finisher pic!