The marathon that wasn't

In a perfect world, last weekend I would have been a few hours south running the Sand Hollow Marathon.

I hate to break it to you people, but it's not a perfect world.

Though I was good with my decision recently to let it go, I still found myself kinda wishing on Saturday that I would have been there.  Although life wouldn't have allowed it anyway and then I would have drowned in guilt while running the entire thing if I had driven down there and tried to have something else make do at home.

It was warmer there.  That would have been nice.  On Saturday we woke up to this:

 After a week of super warm temps recently, which allowed me to start working on the running tan lines

(woohoo! Yes it was tan not burn, not sure why the pic looks so pink), it wasn't my favorite thing to see.

Especially since I woke up at 5:20 and realized that I was supposed to have my oldest at the Middle School for Science Olympiad at....5:15.  Whoops.  Knowing the plan was for the bus to leave by 5:45 I yanked her out of bed and figured it would be ok because I can make it to the Middle School in less than 15 minutes when all the stars align.  Then we opened the front door.  Dangit.
It took 30 minutes to get there.  That above pic was taken about halfway home (at a stop sign. I promise.) In a spot where the snow was light enough for me to actually stop at a stop sign.  On the way there we just rolled through them.  Because it was 5:30 on a Saturday morning and there were pretty much no other cars out and I knew that if I tried to stop I was going to just slide right off the road in my behemoth van.  It's super awesome to not be able to see more than about 20 feet in front of you.
Good news was that only the teacher and one other student had made it to the school at that point so she didn't get left behind.

Next up was getting child the third to Battle of the Books with her teammates.  Thank heaven for one of the other moms knowing how awful the roads were and volunteering to take the girls in her big old 4 wheel drive truck so I could go back home to my other kidlets.  So I could get Taylor back to his scout campout.  And hope Aaron could get home because he had been working an overnight nursing shift and some of the roads he had to take to get home had been closed.  Awesome.  

It turned out to be a marathon weekend after all.  Just not of the race variety.

But hey, had I raced I would have missed driving one of my kids somewhere and running into this around the corner.

Really?

Even out here we don't see that every day.

I did log 26 miles and change over the weekend, so there's that.  Finishing my long run and feeling like I could have gone 26.2 was nice.  It wouldn't have been a fantastic finish but for some reason just knowing that I could have run that race placated my crazy brain.
8 miles at pace on Friday (in a ridiculously wicked wind), and 18 (and a little bit) on Saturday, mostly slogging through all of that unplowed snow.  I tried to take a picture about halfway through when I slowed down to fuel, but my phone froze.  Guess it was a little chillier than I realized.
The storm did blow over by the time I was wrapping up and I got to run the last three miles on actual road because the sun had come out and the snow had melted off the blacktop.
18 miles of squishy wet shoes and only one teeny tiny blister on the top of one toe.  Amazing.
Finishing 18 miles feeling really good, also amazing.
Excited about running 20 next weekend.  There is something about running 20 that just feels awesome.  Not always physically awesome, but awesome none the less.
7 1/2 weeks till Ogden Marathon.
Getting excited!