The weekend of June 23-25,2017 my wife and I had a little “runcation,” in Utah. The main mission was to run Morgan Valley Marathon and then we would explore other areas in Utah. My wife and I have this crazy goal of a marathon in all 50 states. I would like all 50 states under 3 hours, and she wants all under 3:30. Our kids were at Wisconsin at their Grandparents’ dairy farm while we were away. It was actually the longest we have ever been away from our kids since they were born. It was nice to have that opportunity and we appreciated having some time away as a couple. We will first talk about the marathon in this blog, then talk about things we saw on our trip.
Friday: We flew into Salt Lake City, got our rental car and headed towards Morgan, Utah. On normal traffic it should of only took about 50 minutes, but it was Friday afternoon/evening so it took us about 90 minutes. Luckily the race did a free pasta dinner at the fairgrounds where packet pickup was. So we ate and got our packet. Afterwards we went to Walmart to get Gatorade, bagels, and other food items that we needed for the next few days.
Race: The marathon started at 5:30 am, so that meant a 3:30 am wake up call in the morning. We stayed at a Best Western about 10 miles from the race, since the town of Morgan didn’t have any hotels. We wanted to leave about 4:25 am or so. Traffic was no problem and we were one of the first few cars at the fairgrounds. The marathon started at 5:30 and the half started at 6:30. After warming up in the dark, we felt ready to go. Race started right on time which is always nice. Right away a few guys and even a girl sprinted in the front after the gun. It took me about a half mile to pass the girl and she looked legit. It took me a while to get going, not sure if it was because of the early start, or the 5,000 feet elevation. Around mile 6 I caught the guy who was in the lead. Then I heard some foot steps behind me, so I knew I had to keep my pace moving. Since the course has some hills and downhills my pace would fluctuate a little. I kept leading the marathon until around mile 24. Then a guy passed me. I didn’t have much left in the tank. We had climb a decent hill at 21 and I think it took some out of me. I came in to finish in 2:50:52, 2nd overall. The guy who won was 65 seconds ahead of me. It really stinks having a lead for so long and getting passed towards the end. I will use it as a learning tool. After the race I was talking to the guy and he has a 2:35 personal best, and was a local runner who did that marathon a few times. My thoughts was he just knew the course better and maybe I wasted too much energy after 13 miles running so hard. Anyways shortly after the third finisher comes in and its the girl that was ahead of me earlier in the race. She has ran at the Olympic trials before. Laura ended up being the 2nd female finisher. So we both got 2nd and $100 cash, and a $80 gift card to running shoe store for running shoes.
Saturday afternoon: After the race awards we got back to our hotel to shower, and relax a little. It was 10 a.m. too. While we waited we did a load of laundry at the hotel since our running clothes were sweaty. We then planned out the rest of the day. Go get lunch at Costa Vida (a local taco place) shoes at the running store, Salt lake Temple square, and then to Salt Lake Antelope Island park. It was nice to see all those things on Saturday. We went knee deep into Salt Lake as well. We were so full from lunch, for supper we just got an ice cream shake and some sweet potato fries.
Sunday: We got up early to eat breakfast and wanted to head out towards Arches National Park by 7 am, it was a 4 hour drive from Morgan, UT with some of it through Canyon, curvy areas. It was going to be hot in Arches National Park and we had plenty of Gatorade, and water, and our bagels for lunch. In fact while we were there it was 103 degrees. Arches National Park is a must see if your ever in Utah. Well worth the drive from Salt lake City for us. We did some hiking on different trails, with the longest and hardest hike we did (4.0 miles total) to see Delicate Arch. It was worth it. We made sure to drink some on our hike too. Once we got to the top I got right next to the Arch, but Laura wasn’t feeling steady enough, especially after doing a marathon the day before. The rock platform Delicate Arch sits on also declines towards a cliff. I told her to stay where see was and snap some photos of me. We also had some people take a couples photo for us.
They had construction on one of the side roads so we couldn’t see Broken Arch. Overall though, we saw pretty much all the Arches we wanted to about 15 of them and was there about 6 hours. We then had to drive about 3 hours 30 min to Salt Lake City to our hotel which was close to the airport, since we flew back Monday morning.
Overall, we had a lot of fun in Utah and it was nice to knock out another state in our quest for a marathon in every state.
Jake Gillette 