22 Miles and Counting

This morning I woke up at 6:30 to get ready for my run. I won't lie, I was a bit nervous. The most I had ever run previously had been 17.5, and today I wanted to run from my apartment in Provo to the Payson Walmart. 22 miles on foot to be exact. Last night I had prepared most of the materials I would need for my run, as you can see in the picture below. I have a running belt that holds two 8 oz bottles (I usually bring a couple dollars to buy a water if needed or just fill up the two at gas stations), two granola bars (one for breakfast and one for the run if needed), a light reflector for the dark parts of the run, and a Gu and two homemade Gu..s (really easy to make, see recipe in recipe tab). With these, I took off at 7am and ran... and ran... and ran...

Honestly the run was great. I had chosen a lot of back roads that gave me the chance to see some of the beautiful parts of Utah, and the first 14 miles went by pretty quickly and pretty uneventfully. After two hours, traffic started to pick up, mostly because of the Color thing at the Krishna temple, and I was starting to enter places I had never run before, just mapped out. Being the genius I am, I never actually drove down these roads to see how things were, and turns out there was about a 6 mile stretch between Springville and Payson where there was just a crappy back road with nowhere for me to run, except on the road where I constantly had to check over my shoulder to make sure no one would hit me. This slowed me down a bit but I continued on undeterred.

When I was just reaching payson, about mile 18, I thought I had reached Walmart already which made me pretty happy. I saw the McDonald's sign and thought, "You beautiful golden arches". Yeah, after getting in to town and asking for some directions I was told I was still a ways away. I received directions that sent me running to the top of a hill, which was horrible after having gone that far, then all the way back down the hill to arrive at Walmart. Little did I realize until looking after, but it was completely unnecessary for me to run to the top of the hill. I simply could have gone around it. Heaven forbid someone tell a runner the easy way to get there!

The feeling going down the last stretch to meet Cindy was awesome. My legs were hurting and I was exhausted, but I just couldn't believe I had done it. Never had I thought I could do something like that in my life. I can't explain how I feel exactly, just thankful and beyond happy that a big guy like me can push his own boundaries and do something awesome. I look forward to my marathon and being able to prove to myself that I can do it, and who knows, maybe i can find something more challenging after :)

Of course Cindy had to take a picture of me at the end. I just wanted to sit down!

My running gear that I carried with me.

My homemade Gu. Still need to make some adjustments, and not put quite so much, but it worked out really well for a first trial. (Thankfully it didn't leave me on the side of the road puking or in a bathroom for a while) :)