Braveheart 5K - First Race of 2011

This morning was our first race of 2011. I didn't want to go. I woke up early to take care of my parents' dogs and came home and crawled back in bed. I was really really hoping that Tim would say "Let's skip the race and stay home in our warm bed." Nope...he got up and got ready and so I decided to get it together and head out.

The Braveheart 5k-10k is a local race here in Logan, sponsored by the USU ROTC and the funds raised go to a local "need". The "need" this year was for a woman in my parents ward named Molly. Her son Mason was born with a congenital heart defect and as you can imagine, the costs are staggering. He's doing well and has had his second surgery and will be "cured" after his third surgery. Anyways, we thought it was a GREAT cause, which is why we decided to run.

We picked up Kyra and headed up to the university to get registered. I was overwhelmed with the number of runners and walkers who showed up. I'm guessing (from bib numbers) that there were about 500 participants which was awesome! There was some confusion at the start due to the number of people, but at 9:15 the 5k participants (that's us!) headed out.

Tim planned on staying with Kyra, who is not a runner, and told me to go ahead and run, so off I went. I got stuck around these super annoying college girls who were just whiny, so I sped up a bit and got past them. I didn't feel like I was pushing too hard and I was feeling good so I just kept up my pace. I skipped the water stop and kept plodding along. I looked at my watch and was trying to gauge how far I had run and how much further I had to go, but I had no idea what my pace was.

When I left this morning, I mentally set a goal to finish in under 36 minutes. I haven't been running much at all, except for a few runs in the past couple of weeks, so I was thinking that 12 min/mile would be a good pace. Boy was I surprised when I finished in 32:07! I can't believe that I did 11 min/miles and I probably should have/could have gone faster!

Once I crossed the finish line, I headed back out to find Tim and Kyra. I found Tim easily. He was about 6 minutes behind me. He told me to go and find Kyra and that she was far back. I kept running and running and was thinking "yikes, where is she?!" when I finally found her. I guess she had about 1.25 or so miles to go. I got her jogging for 1 minute intervals and then we found Tim. We could see the finish line and Kyra wanted to walk. I told her to catch the woman in the blue jacket ahead of her and beat her. All of the sudden, Ky had this burst of speed and off she went. I think her finish time was around 48 minutes.

After the race, we grabbed some super concentrated Gatorade...yummy! I also grabbed a slice of Great Harvest cinnamon bread and then it was time to head home to get ready for dog school. I'm so glad that Tim got me up to go to the race. I forgot how much I love racing. It was also a surprise to see that I'm not as out of shape as I thought. Now, I just have to get into better shape.

Racing is definitely not a bad way to kick off the weekend!

P.S. We forgot the camera this morning, so no pictures. Oh well...I'm sure there will be more races to come.

The Vacation in St. George

Last Thursday morning, the family headed to St. George. My parents went. My brother Travis, his wife Brooke, and their kids, John, Kate, and Mac went. My brother Eric, his wife Karen, and their son Cole went. Tim, Kyra, Rylan, and I also went after we dropped Kona off at the dog hotel. So, yep, there was a big caravan of Hansen's that drove from Logan to St. George on Thursday afternoon.

When we arrived, the kids all wanted to hit the pool, so we spent a couple of hours laying out in the sun and enjoying the 73 degree temperature. Dinner was at The Brick Oven. Oh and Tim and I had to hit the Eddie Bauer Outlet so that he could get some of his very most favorite t-shirts. The evening was spent back at the pool and relaxing. I should also mention that I found out that I'm going to be an auntie to a new baby boy, hopefully on my birthday!

Friday morning, we woke up and hit the delicious continental breakfast and then it was off to Snow Canyon State Park. The kids wanted to hike and climb on the rocks and that seemed like the perfect place. We headed to the sand dunes first.




After the sand dunes, we headed to the trail to see the "pioneer names". The names were written in axle grease, as early as 1881. It was pretty cool to see. I almost got to see John face plant on his way down from the pioneer names.


The kids, especially Rylan, wanted to climb on some more rocks, so we headed over to Pioneer Park, which was definitely the hit of the weekend. I think we spent a couple of hours there and all of the kids had a blast.






We spent the afternoon with my grandparents, swimming, and then ended up back at the hotel. Tim decided we were going to go for a drive out in the desert to shoot, so off we went again. Somehow, we ended up in Arizona on a dirt road and out of nowhere, a sign for the Little Black Mountain Petroglyph Site appeared so we headed that direction. Tim decided that this dirt road was the perfect place for Kyra's first driving lesson, so she changed seats with him and away we went. She did okay...but definitely needs alot of practice. We found the site and it was super cool.






The kids got bored after a little while, but I loved it. I thought it was really cool and definitely a hidden treasure.


I headed down the other trail and found this awesome picture. It looks like a timeline and I was totally amazed! I'm not a petroglyph expert, so I have no idea what it means, but it was super cool.


Oh and I finally got a picture of Tim and I!


On our way back to the car, I caught this cute moment...


Dinner that evening was at a Mexican restaurant and we ended up back at the pool. That night we all got a wakeup call at 2:30am when a very nice man's car alarm went off for 5 minutes. Tim didn't go back to sleep and needless to say the whole group was sleepy.

Saturday morning, we got up for breakfast, went swimming, and then loaded the cars up. The kids were definitely up for more time crawling around and up rocks, so we headed back up to Pioneer Park.






That's John, Kate, Rylan, and Travis up at the small arch. They climbed up to the top and ended up climbing around the entire ridge. They had a blast.


After lunch at Red Robin, we spent some time at a park and then we headed out to Larry and Nyla's condo for some basketball watching time. Dinner was with Eric and Karen at a pretty yummy Thai restaurant that included sushi. My cute nephew Cole decided that he loves sushi and worked on mastering the art of chopsticks!




After dinner, we grabbed some frozen custard at Nielson's Frozen Custard and headed back to watch Utah State beat Boise State to win the WAC. Sunday morning, we loaded up and then headed back to Logan. It was kind of a sad drive, since we were leaving the land of sunshine, but I'm pretty sure that we'll have to head back there soon. It was a fun trip and I'm looking forward to our next vacation!

Kona's First Training Run

This morning, when Tim woke up, he asked Kona if he would like to go running. Apparently, our workout today was going to be a run. Kona has never gone running with us before, so this was a new experience for all of us. Because he's a great dane, we have to be careful with how much impact he has on his joints, especially since he's still a puppy and still has alot of growing and developing to do. We've got approval from the vet for him to start running, but the weather has been sort of iffy and we didn't want a filthy, muddy dog. So, today was the day!

As you can tell from the picture, Kona was ready to go! We didn't take the camera on the run, so no "running" pics, but Kona had a great time. He did pretty well and stayed fairly close to me or Tim for most of the run. He did start pulling on the leash on the way home. I think he was ready for his breakfast. Oh, and while we were on our run, we saw 7 deer. There were 3 bucks and 4 does. They were gorgeous!

After the run, Kona had breakfast and then wandered around the house, watching us clean. He's opposed to the vacuum, unless we're vacuuming him off, so he usually just paces around in whatever room we're not cleaning in. After things quieted down, and he got vacuumed off, he crashed. You can tell how wiped out he is in this picture.