On Saturday, Jimmy ran the St. George Marathon. I took him to the bus loading area at 3:20 AM!! All 7000 runners boarded school buses (every available bus in the county) and rode 26.2 miles to the race starting line. There they had bon fires to keep the runners warm until the 6:45 AM start time. I went back to the hotel after dropping Jimmy off and went back to sleep! Later I drove to the finish line area and ran 11 miles around downtown St. George while I waiting for Jimmy to finish the marathon. I cheered for Jimmy as he approached the finish line, but with such a large crowd, he never saw or heard me!
This was a hilly course!
We are driving DOWN this huge hill, but Jimmy had to run UP this 7% incline during the marathon!
The marathon was overall net downhill since the elevation at the starting line was about 5200 ft. and the ending elevation was about 2600 ft., but there were plenty of uphills throughout the race. A tough course!
another view of the race course
Highway 18. The race route.
Jimmy had a remarkable race time! 3 hours, 29 minutes! That was several minutes better than his previous PR, BUT, he was still somewhat disappointed---his goal was a 3:25. I am super proud of him anyway! I know that he will run a 3:25 marathon soon.
After we rested at the hotel for a couple of hours, we decided to do some more site-seeing.
The landscape was just so beautiful!
pretty green cactus
another picture with a little bitty me to show you how massive these rocks are
Can you see the rabbit?
Thankfully, this rabbit was the only wildlife we saw. I was afraid that we might encounter a mountain lion!
Sunday we drove 2 hours to Las Vegas to attend a worship service. We met some really nice people who live, work, and worship in Las Vegas---although I would NEVER want to live there! Our plane was leaving extremely early on Monday morning from the Las Vegas airport, so that is why we went ahead and drove to Las Vegas on Monday.
After the church service we drove to Hoover Dam. Although it is man-made, it is breathtaking too! We walked all around the outside of the enormous dam, toured the visitor's center, watched a movie about the construction of the dam (fascinating!), and then we took a tour of the inside of the dam. Amazing! I sometimes get claustrophobic, and walking inside all of those tunnels inside the massive dam was a little bit confining! The history of the dam and its construction is very interesting. The entire time we were there we were wishing that our children were there too! They would have loved it!
Part of the tour included us walking around INSIDE this dam! Inside! I enjoyed the tour, but I was ready to be outside.
After completing our tour of Hoover Dam, we drove back to Las Vegas and checked into our hotel. Let me just say that I have never seen anything like Las Vegas! We weren't there very long though. We had to leave the hotel at 5:00 AM to go to the airport.
Monday afternoon we were home sweet home! I was so excited to have my children back home too! Jimmy and I really enjoyed our time together, but it was so nice for us all to be together again at home.
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