Southern Utah Half 2015

The Southern Utah Half Marathon starts up in Coral Canyon at the Highland Park and end down in the Bloomington Baseball Park.  It is a downhill 13.1 mile run that starts bright and early at 6:45am.  On April 25th it was already raining at 6am.  But it was letting up.  It was a cold,wet start to the morning.

 The runners came down the hill and right to the first aid station that our YM and leaders were doing.  Unfortunately only 4 of the 8 young men that signed up to help showed up. 

 So this is what it looked like when the first couple runners came by but...

This is what it looked like when there where a lot of runners.  Notice the stacks of water and Gatorade that I had ready to go in the first picture compared to the second.  I got the aid station all set up and then left them to take care of it because I was actually in charge of direction traffic in three different places further down the route where they come off of the trail and onto the actual road.

 Sophie and Emily stood up at the top of the trail where it stopped and directed them onto the street.  I was a mile down the road telling them to turn and go down this little road that would lead them to JoEllen and Matty who would be standing where the trail started up again telling them to get back on the trail.  Here are Josh, George and Miles.

 Joel and Lyle Anderson weren't to far behind them.

 Ben was with me and at the end he was super bored. 

 This is our friend and JoEllen's neighbor Brian Brezeal.  His wife Jessie, was helping with the race then decided to run it and convinced him to follow the last runner.  So he borrowed Shawn Jaca's Beach Cruiser bike so he could do it in style.  It was pretty awesome.

 George came across the line first followed by Miles, Josh and then Joel.  Thank goodness for the race crews pictures because the last "runner" to pass by us did so after these guys had already crossed the finish line.  I think next year we'll help pass out water at the aid station.

  We got there and took these pictures next two pictures and then raced to Ben's soccer game that we were already late for.

 Joel and Josh always hang around until the end to see if they won anything in their age group.  Last year Josh took first.  This year they had a lot more people and he took 3rd.  1st and 2nd were won by people that are not from here.

 

In the younger age group... George took 1st but couldn't stick around to get his award and Miles took 2nd.  That was the last race where Josh and George were in different age groups.  Until Josh turns 19 they will be competing against each other.  It will be fun to see how much faster they get.  It's like Courtney and Shayne when they swam.  They pushed each other to be the best they could be and sometimes Shayne won and sometimes Courtney won but they where always so happy at the end because they had bettered their time because of the other person.