the big run

A couple weeks ago, Mike and I went to Newport, Oregon for Mike's 4th marathon. Mike got his best time ever at a 3:28 and he looked wonderful the whole time---not a single bloody nipple or anything. He even claims to have done an oyster shooter along the way but I would never take his word on that. 

Besides the marathon we had a great weekend exploring beaches and way to many bakeries.

Here are some pictures from the trip:



Mike's friend Brian also ran the race and I got to play with his family during the marathon.

zip, zip, zip

Last Saturday, Mike and I went up to Tamarack Resort for their zip line tour. Zipping offers an array of benefits including:

1) flying through the trees at 40 mph
2) wearing goofy hats
3) perching a few hundred feet up in a tree that is swaying (yikes)
4) hiking from zip line to zip line
5) beautiful fall foliage
6) spectacular views of Cascade lake (at 40 mph from hundreds of feet in the air)

We Ran

After 3.5 months of training, we finally got to run the marathon this Saturday. It was pretty much what everyone said it would be... way hard. Since none of us could walk after the run, we mostly just layed around and watched movies and let my mom feed us. I am still wondering when my quads will allow me to descend stairs normally.

Now I am just looking forward to 0.5 marathons. I was feeling great at 13.1.

Narrows

The Narrows is a spectacular sandstone canyon that terminates at the Temple of Sinawava in Zion's National Park. For the small price of hiking in a river for at least ten hours, you can be in the midst of spectacular painted sandstone cliffs, and waterfalls, and snake grass. As Brigham said, leaving feels like "getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden."

Just right!

I really like to mountain bike. Except that I don't really like going uphill or downhill. (Uphill makes me tired and downhill is scary). Otherwise, I am quite a hard-core mountain biker.

However, those two little exceptions sometimes put quite a kink in my mountain biking enjoyment. Whenever I go biking I get way behind on the climbs because I am weak and slow and I get even more behind on the downhill because I hold my brakes with a kung fu death grip.

But yesterday, a few of us went to a biking park and Steph and I found the perfect path. It wound around a lovely hill and all the climbs ended just before I got out of breath and none of the decents were steep or rocky enough to be scary. It was like the hill knew me and wanted to make me happy. And I was happy.

The bike park also included a terrain park for lunatics like Aaron and Mike.