Salt Lake City Marathon 2010

Written by Scott:

My brother Glenn had run 9 Marathons and had been talking about running the Salt Lake Marathon for some time. I figured it would be a good idea to run it with him considering I ran the Deseret News Marathon and was feeling that I could experience a better race. With 13 weeks until the Marathon I started my training.

I hadn't really been running since the last Marathon and I wasn't sure if the 13 weeks would be sufficient to feel prepared. The hardest part of the training was certainly the blistery cold weather. It wasn't too bad for short runs because I would just hop onto the treadmill in the basement turn on the Utah Jazz game and run 5 miles. My Saturday long runs were a different story. Most of them I was able to get outside and run in my cold weather gear but I didn't enjoy doing it when it was snowing. When my 18 mile run came along I woke up to a horrible storm of wet snow. I decided to go to Gold's Gym and attempt running 18 miles on a treadmill. Thank goodness for the Cardio Theater. I watched "Liar Liar" and "Over the Top". I did pretty good for the first 12 miles but the next 6 were awful...but...I did it.

By the week of the race I felt much more prepared for this Marathon then the last one.

Alicia was very nice to help me carbo load the week before the Marathon. Every meal consisted mostly of pasta. The night before the race we had a Pre-Marathon Spaghetti Dinner for everyone. Alicia and the kids all wore t-shirts that Alicia had made with my picture on them. They said "Salt Lake City Marathon 2010" and "Go Daddy, Go!".

5:45 am Glenn and I are anxiously awaiting our shuttle to the race.

The great part about the Salt Lake Marathon is it runs through a lot of my stomping grounds from when I was younger. For those of you who have followed our blog you might remember our old house was right at Mile 9. Every year I would set up a "un-official" water stand and cheer on the Marathoners. I never actually dreamed I would one day run it.Approx Mile 3.5 Mom and Dad were there to cheer us on and provided us a nice place to hand off our long sleeve shirts. In this section of the race I saw one of my favorite sites. For as far as I could see down the road it was just a herd of people running. It looked very cool. The half Marathon and the Marathon started at the same place and there were close to 6,000 people running both.

Around mile 5 the course split and it was amazing to see how many people were running the half compared to the full 26.2 miles. If I remember correctly just over 1000 actually ran the whole thing.

Mile 6ish - Greg Thornton and his family was cheering us on and handed us a bottle of powerade.

Mile 9- Brian, Annabelle and Clara were waiting by our old house to hand us some energy beans. Who knew they had caffeinated Jelly Belly's....very cool.

Mile 11- We saw Glenn's sister-in-law Vivian sitting on the course cheering.

13.1. We hit the half way point and we were feeling great. We were barely under the 2 hour mark I was excited to see Alicia and the girls in just one more mile.

Mile 14ish- No Alicia, no kids, but a woman from our church was there to offer us Otterpops (we both declined) and told us that Alicia had the van packed with all the kids and the battery was dead. She would try to see us at the finish line. This made me sad. I had really looked forward to seeing them but I mostly felt bad for Alicia. How frustrating this had to be for her.

Kids waiting to borrow our neighbors van so they could get to the race.

Mile 18.5- We are running and we hear someone yell "Scott...Glenn" There was Alicia and all the kids. She had just unloaded the kids and if she hadn't of looked up she would have missed us because we didn't see her at all. We stopped took a quick picture and continued.

Mile 21- I started feeling tired, hot and anxious for the next water stand. It was now hotter than any of my training runs and I didn't feel used to the draining effect of the sun. Of course it also could just be that running 21 miles happens to also take a lot out of you.

Mile 22ish- My left calf starts cramping up. This also happened in the last marathon and I wasn't looking forward to the next 4 miles. With every step I took my left calf would get a massive muscle cramp but fortunately it never locked up completely. I stopped probably 6-7 times to do a quick stretch. I am not sure why I cramp up like this. I felt I had been drinking enough water. With each step I was just wincing in pain and often I would shout out "AAAHHH". I tried altering my stride, making contact with different parts of my foot on the ground but nothing really seemed to help. I just figured I was going to deal with this the rest of the way.

24.5- No more cramping but I forgot that there was a four block assent of maybe 150 feet in elevation but it felt more like 500. What an awful place to have an uphill portion.

Mile 25- The home stretch. A slight down hill and I feel we picked up our pace back up now that I wasn't crampy any more.

We turned into the Gateway and I could see lots of people watching us come in. I started waving my hands up and down to cheer us on. This cheering made me feel we could push it. As we headed down the final block Glenn said, "Let's pass the lady in the pink". We started sprinting. We passed her and another person and hit the finish line.
Scott Buchanan Time- 4:06:52, Average pace- 9:25,
Glenn Buchanan Time- 4:06:52, Average pace- 9:25

Turns out we finished with the exact same time. Glenn of course can run much faster but stayed with me the whole time. He claims he couldn't have gone much faster because of the elevation change and having a cold. I know he is just being nice to his wee brother.

So I cut just over 11 minutes off of my Marathon time from 9 months prior. Even with the cramping I had a much better race. I wasn't crying and on the verge of passing out when I finished. Part of that is that I think it is just more emotional to finish your first one and we finished when it was 72 degrees instead of 94 like the first race. I felt good, I was glad it was over but I was frustrated with the cramping. Alicia said I looked much better after this one too.

Glenn and I talked about many things during our 4 hours of running. One of those was that I ran with him in his first race ever. The Ouelessebougou 5k. I was probably about 16 at the time. I would have never thought that one day we would run a race again. And never that it would be a Marathon. Thanks Glenn, I love you!

Big Boy.

Zachary is six months old already! I really can't believe it. It is happening way to fast. I can not even begin to say how much I completely and totally adore this little man. I am in love with him. I can't get enough of him. He snuggles up close to me, he laughs so hard at anything I do to make him smile, he follows me or my voice around the room, he cries when I walk away from him . . . . I would say he feels the same about me. Zach is just the sweetest thing ever.

At 6 months Zachary weighs 14 lbs. 1 oz (5th percentile), length is 25 inches (25th percentile), and his head measures 42.8 cm. So he's a little one, but I am guessing that won't last for long. He is a good eater. He still nurses every 3 hours and is eating baby food like a champ 2 - 3 times a day. Our problems are that he still wants to wake up through the night to nurse and when it comes to baby food, he will not touch anything green. If I feed the kid peas or green beans he does a full bodied, dramatic gagging scene. It's pathetic. Zachary is napping on and off during the day, but usually does take a good, long nap in the afternoon. Another nap at dinnertime and then is in bed around 8pm. We've got a good schedule down in the mornings because he wakes up for an hour and then goes back down for an hour. That is when the girls and I run down to the basement for them to play and me to run 4 - 5 miles on the treadmill. I hope this lasts. It's working well.

He is starting to roll all over the room to get around, which I always think is hilarious. He rolls and rolls until he is pinned up against the couch and crying for help. He is also starting to sit up on his own for a few seconds before toppling over. He squeals and laughs at the girls as they entertain him and he has started spitting raspberries. I love all of it!We got 6 month pictures taken and the boy would not smile. Oh well, he's still cute.

Opening Day 2010!

Once again, Opening Day for the Red Sox was a big deal around here. For some, I won't mention names, it was just as exciting as Easter itself. We did Easter all day, but when the first Red Sox vs. Yankees game started we changed into our Red Sox clothes and cheered them on. We had prepared ourselves the night before by watching "Fever Pitch" (one of our favorites) and "Reverse of the Curse of the Bambino". We were ready and excited for Opening Day. It was the first game for the Red Sox in Fenway Park this year. It was against the Yankees. And they won!!! Awesome. And then they lost the next two. We need to get Zach back in his Red Sox onsie. Scott thinks he is the lucky charm. I'm sure he'll get plenty of wear out of it while he watches baseball with his dad this summer. Let's go Sox!Scott got to hold a little sleeping Zachary as he watched the game. That is one happy man.

P.S. There are no further pictures of Brielle because it was all we could do (bribery, pleading, etc.) just to get her to wear a t-shirt and pants for the 3 minutes it took to take the first picture. She DOES NOT do pants or t-shirts.

A White Easter

Our Easter included it all - candy, throw up, new dresses, diarrhea, tulips, snow, terror, excitement, etc. etc. It was quite the week. The good and the bad.

The Sunday before Easter is when the girls wore their new "Easter dresses". I bought these before I realized we wouldn't even be going to church on Easter Sunday. They were sure excited and happy about wearing new dresses for the Sunday before though.That evening we got to celebrate Brian's birthday at their house, so the girls got to at least be dressed up in Easter dresses with their cousins too.The party at Brian and Rachel's was fun for everyone. Our week went down hill from there (but then it picks up again for Easter at least). Monday night Scott and I went on a date. I met him downtown after work and we went to dinner (Z Tejas. Delicious.) and then the Jazz game. We had a great time together and then came home to Brielle throwing up . . . . all. night. long. Zach got it next. Then by Thursday I was sick with the same and Friday it hit Scott. We were really, really sick. It also snowed all week. Really, really snowed. Sooooooooooooooooooooo . . . we stayed home and tried to pretend it felt like springy Easter time and made a craft each day.

Toilet paper roll chicks.
Easter bunny candy jars.
Marshmallowy nests and bird eggs.
Coloring Easter eggs.
By Saturday everyone was better, so we made an effort to leave the house in between sessions of Conference for an Easter egg hunt at Wheeler Farm. We love Wheeler Farm and thought it would be fun to be outside hunting eggs with the girls and seeing the baby animals. We got there, with baskets in hand, to find this sign. Well, they ALWAYS have wagon rides. And if they are going to advertise to children that there will be an egg hunt, I say they should probably have some eggs. Scott and girls really searched the area just in case there might just be one little ole egg left, but found nothin'. Absolutely nothing.
They did have wagon rides and baby animals though.Finally the moment arrived when the house was totally clean and disinfected from germs (we spent Saturday listening to conference and cleaning), the girls were in bed and we were waiting for the Easter Bunny to come. Then we heard Ava still awake on the stairs. She was really crying. Why? Because she was so scared of the Easter Bunny coming. She begged us to lay with her in bed. She laid there just mumbling about the Easter Bunny coming into our house. I can see why that might be scary. I told her he was just a tiny, cute, nice, furry, white baby bunny. He would knock on our door and give mommy her candy and then hop away. Not come in the house. She would think about that for a minute and then say, "Then the BIG Daddy bunny open the door and come in Ava's room." Terrified. After an hour of playing out scary bunny stories in her mind, she finally fell asleep. We set up Easter baskets and then Evan joined us for the watching of "Fever Pitch" in honor of the Red Sox opening day that was also happening the next day.And just as you would hope and expect for a beautiful Easter morning, it snowed all night, so we awoke to a white Easter. But the girls were thrilled! They were so excited about Easter baskets . . . . . . and an egg hunt . . .
. . . and that the Easter bunny brought Uncle Evan to play with.On Easter day we tried to listen to conference while we got ready for everyone to come for Easter brunch. I was in the kitchen making six quiche (spinach sausage, bacon mushroom and ham hash brown). Scott was setting up and helping me. And then at 12:30 we had Brian, Rachel and kids, Fred, Rama, Landon, Sarah and kids, Tawna, Lindsey (roommate), Evan, Kristina all here for a fun brunch. We had quiche, cinnamon rolls (made by Landon and so good!), hot cross buns, lots of fruit, O.J. and all the Easter candy anyone could eat. I guess things got so busy by then that I have no more pictures of the day, but believe me, it was so fun to have everyone. It made for a beautiful and perfect Easter.