Anticipation

So, I have a half marathon on Saturday morning. The longest I've ran is 8.5 miles since the Top of Zion relay race. I didn't run at all during the month of August, and have only been running regularly the last 3 weeks or so, since school started. So basically I am completely winging this race. Which is going to be awesome! Haha.

LUCKILY for me, the race starts at nearly 8,000 feet elevation and ends just below 5,000 feet. So probably the reason I am not too stressed out about this race is because I know gravity will help me out more than anything else. I love downhill running, some people say it hurts their knees or quads but I say if you have strong quads (which I do) then you shouldn't have any problems. Almost every run I've done so far has had some downhills involved in it.

So let's hope and pray that I come out of this race with a personal record!! That would be so wonderful. On that same note, I'm looking to PR at the turkey trot this Thanksgiving so I will be focusing on speed more than usual for the next two months! Should be fun!

The Holy Ghost is real, y'all.

A couple weeks ago, I was running up in Provo canyon on a beautiful crisp Saturday morning. There were so many people on the trail, so I felt totally comfortable running by myself. I was just finishing up about 6 miles of a pretty good run. I was up by Bridal Veil falls, and I knew that there was a part of the Bonneville Shoreline trail that started near there.

I have always wanted to try trail running, but I know it's not safe to do it by myself, which means I had yet to try it because no one will come run with me! Haha. Anyway, I ran To the trailhead (it's between the parking lot and the falls) and in a split second decision decided to run on it for as long as I could. So I start running on this trail, it climbs up pretty steeply while winding away from the paved trail below and all the people.

I'm only running for about five minutes when all of a sudden I stop in my tracks, like a sudden dead stop. I don't know why I stopped. I thought it was weird, but I was still excited to finally be running on a trail so I tried to keep going. I went another 30 seconds and all of a sudden it was like my feet stopped without me thinking about it.

It was at that point that I was like, okay, I'm obviously being told something. I stood there for a couple seconds, then the thought came really clearly, "Turn around!" Welp, I wasn't about to ignore that. So I turned around, ran the short distance back to the paved trail and parking lot, and left.

I have no idea why I had the prompting to turn around. And I will never know. But imagine if I had disobeyed the Holy Ghost? There could have been a bear, or a murderer, or I could have gotten lost (not likely! Hah). But I think in any situation, the HG doesn't just give you promptings for kicks. They are always for a reason.

I still fully intend on running that trail, but not until I find me a running buddy! Haha

Things.

So one of my best friends Annie does this thing where she posts about things she loves. I have a lot of things that I love, but not necessarily things that I love from a particular day, given that most days are typically spent in school, sleeping, eating, or running. Ha ha! So, I thought I'd talk about things I love about my life in general.

For one, I absolutely love the feeling after a good, hard run. One where the sweat is pouring into my eyes, a faster pace feels easy, and I feel like I can go on forever. The last few runs I have done have felt this way. Especially the run I did on Friday. It was 8.5 miles of steep uphills and downhills and I felt like I was exploring new territory the entire way, which is one my favorite things to do on a run. I love finding new places to go and new routes to call my own. Sometimes I even name them, for example I have the Temple Run (up to, and around, the temple and back), the Y Trailhead Run (only done once, probably will do it again soon), and the University Parkway Run, where I head up to that road, follow it east all the way around BYU campus, and back to my house. I named this new one the Timpview Run, because I spent about 2 or so miles on Timpview Road. So, any day that I get in a particularly good run turns it into a special day, and I think it is obvious that running is a thing I love.

Another thing I love: driving in a car with the windows down, music on full blast, and singing at the top of my lungs. The singing part is the most important part of the equation, I usually end up after every road trip with a hoarse voice and a sore throat, especially if it is the 10 hour drive from Utah to home. I just feel a rush of happiness when it is just me in the car, singing to my favorite songs with (almost) not a care in the world. I know it seems random, but we all have our randomness about us. 

Family. I love my family. I had a friend in school ask me the other day why I was moving back to Arizona in December (to do my clinicals, when most people are doing them in Utah). I told him one word: family. My whole family is in Arizona, both extended sides, and my life is so much different without them. I miss Clouse family dinners every month. I miss random game nights with the Wilkins side. Most of all, I miss my two sisters and my parents. Now, Dustin and Heather are up here in Utah with me, but as we are all so busy I might only see them two or three times a month. I expect to see a lot more of them when the little bambino is born in December! 

On that same note, I love Arizona. Like, in a I-could-never-marry-a-man-from-anywhere-else kind of love. I know that seems extreme, but even the thought of marrying a non-Arizonan just gives me a "meh" kind of feeling. Ha ha! Who cares if I am limiting myself. I do what I want!! Ha ha. Also, I love the monsoons. I love that you can have blazing hot deserts and cool beautiful mountains in the same state. I love hunting with my dad all over the state. I love my town, Gilbert. I love all the running trails that I have come to know and love over the years. I think I have about a hundred different routes, ranging anywhere from 4 to 20 miles. I love how it still has a small town feel, even though it technically is the largest town in the country (not a city yet!). We even have our own temple, to be dedicated next year. I love all of what I call my "Arizona friends"! They never fail to let me down when ever I make a trip home.

I love my little brother Wes! He's on his mission in Arkansas, and as such gets preferential treatment over all other siblings. Sorry, guys, but I think Mom would agree with me in that Weston is the favorite child right now. That could all change when he gets home in 7 MONTHS (!!!) because he could totally turn out to be some self-righteous little turd (hey, it happens to the best of 'em). But for now, he is favorite. I love his emails every week, he is so insightful about every experience he has, and he always has a way of turning even bad experiences around to make them positive. Hmmm, sounds a bit like me? I taught him well! Also he has funny stories every week, and he adopted a kitten, which you can't help but laugh at because this is the kid that will swerve towards a cat when it crosses the road. Bless his heart.

I'm starting to realize that I have a lot more things that I love, that I didn't even think about. But for now, I'll end this post before it gets too ridiculously long. 

Also, BYU lost again to Utah. Good thing I don't go there, or I would be upset. (I'm pretty sure I said the exact same thing last year). Have a good Sunday, y'all!!

Schoo-ul.

School has started again. After the last week of last semester (in which I barely made it out alive) I was a little nervous to come back. What if my teacher now thought I was stupid because I had almost failed a test THREE times? Would all the teachers treat me differently?

Luckily my teachers are amazing, it's almost like that last finals week never happened. I've made a special effort to be early to class every morning, listen during lecture, and not waste time during lab.

That being said, it's only the third day and I'm already tired. In fact, I already want a nap tomorrow. How do people get through their days without nap time?? Am I the only 23 year old out there who enjoys nap time so much that I will pick sleep over food every time? I am convinced that those who say that they can never take naps are just kidding themselves. I feel like I'm making up for all those times when I was younger, when I didn't want to take a nap. This is normal, right? Heaven help me when I have children...

Mount Timp hike

I forgot to post about this one!! About a month ago I got a call from my friend Beau, and he's like, let's go hike Timp on Thursday! The plan was to start at midnight (technically Friday) and hike to the top in time for the sunrise. Of course I was in, how could I pass that up?? Never mind that the mountain is over 11,000 feet tall, which would make it the highest elevation I've been on EVER. Also the trail is about 14 miles round trip, what's not to love about that?

So Beau, his friend Jordan and I set out on our adventure. The hike up was not bad at all, I was mostly scared about bears! It was almost chilly but perfect for hiking. The best part was that it was so dark that I couldn't see how far we had to go, which made it so much easier to keep going at a pretty good pace. It took us about five hours to get to the top, we even had an hour to spare once we got there before the sun even came up. Of course, me being me I started singing "Circle of Life" when the sun appeared. I mean, my life is a musical after all. We hung out with the other people at the top who had braved the mountain, took some pictures, and then started down around 7:30 am. We were well above the tree line and could now see what we were hiking through on the way up. Before we had gone very far, we saw some mountain goats!! My very first time seeing them so of course I was excited out of my mind. We were able to get super close to them since they were so used to people, it is the most popular hike in the Wasatch after all, so they were used to people getting close. Anyway, got some great pictures of them.

The hike down was surprisingly hard, we were already so sore from the climb and so coming down was pretty brutal and slow. We had to cross this giant glacier-ice pack that took forever because it was so slippery. We had crossed it earlier in the way up but we hadn't been able to see how big it really was. However, I was able to take in the beautiful scenery and just enjoy being on this huge mountain that I've now grown to love. I took lots of pictures so enjoy some of my favorites!

Zion National Park

So I hadnt been to Zion's since my junior year of high school, so I didn't really remember how absolutely awesome it was!

The original plan was to go to Havasupai the weekend of August 2nd through the 4th. The morning of the 2nd we were informed that the flooding had been bad there for a couple of weeks, so we turned to plan B, Zion's!

My friends Clark, Matt, and Kaitlin camped just outside of the park at a fairly cheap campsite. However, food wasn't as cheap as we thought it would be so we were pretty discounted to spend so much money at a restaurant nearby. Overall, so happy with the campsite because it had nice showers for free!!!

Friday, we kind of slept in until about 8:30, got ready, and headed to the park. They have these cool shuttle buses for free once you pay to get inside the park ($25 for one vehicle for a 7 day pass! So cheap!) and so we rode those to any trail head we wanted to do. That morning we did the Emerald Pools trail and the Weeping Rock trail, both short but cool trails.

That afternoon, after eating food at the lodge and taking a short rest under the giant tree in front of the lodge, we took the shuttle to the Angel's Landing trailhead. I was so excited for this one, because all I had heard was how amazing it was at the top and how scary it was climbing up. If anyone knows me, they know I love adventure, so naturally I was so stoked for it.

And the top was everything I could have imagined!! The views were breathtaking. You could see the entire park, up both canyons. The river looked like a tiny brown snake, the road was even smaller. Get this, the drop-offs on the sides of Angels Landing is about 1,400 feet. I looked down at one point (while hanging on to the chains that are put there for our safety and my sanity) and I got one of those "holy crap I'm going to die" feelings. It was awesome, ha ha! I couldn't even see the side because it was just a sheer, steep cliff.

A thunderstorm came up on us while we are climbing up, and me being the paranoid person that I am about lightning (I have had too many close calls), I suggested that we hurry to the top and not spend too much time once we got there. The lightning wasn't too close, but it was coming fast. Luckily, it didn't start raining until we were already climbing down. Still sketchy though!

Day 2, we decided to sleep in again (if you could call it that, the ground was hard so there wasn't much sleeping going on) and then set out to do The Narrows. This is only hike I had done back when I went in high school, so I was excited to do it again. When we got there the water was super muddy (we called it Willy Wonkas chocolate river) and the bottom is filled with huge rocks that make it hard to walk in. On this hike you're in the river about 80% of the time, which made for slow going because nobody wants to trip and fall into that river. We hiked upriver for a couple hours until we felt like turning around. It was pretty fun because there was so many people, so crossing the river was like an obstacle course, you had to dodge foreigners and boulders. Speaking of, I feel like we were the only English speaking people there!! So many people speaking different languages, mostly French. We heard that and German, Italian, Spanish, and some Asian languages that I would never know which is which. Haha. The people watching was pretty awesome.

Overall, it was an amazing weekend and so much fun!! Its definitely something I want to do every year. When I drove home on Tuesday, me and my dad (he flew up to drive home with me) drove through Zion's so we could ride the shuttle around, so I could show him all the places we went. We saw a gigantic desert bighorn sheep, we may or may not have started a traffic jam when we stopped to look at it. Haha, whoops!

Well I'm having fun at home so far, I've been on more dates in the past week than I have in Provo the last four months. Crazy, huh? Anyway, pictures from the trip!!

Top of Zion Relay

This weekend was so amazing. Out of this world. It was very similar to Ragnar, in that we had next to no sleep, were super smelly and sweaty the whole time, ate too much junk food, listened to too much music, ran so many miles, and yet ended up having the time of our lives.

Thursday night: Didn't leave Provo until around 11, finally got to little Torrey, Utah where the start was around 3 or so in the morning. Slept on the ground by the van in our sleeping bags and woke up in time to see Brooke off for her first leg at 7:30. FYI- there were several start times, depending on how fast your team was. The faster ones started later, hence why we were in the middle of the start times. Average is best! Haha. 

Friday: Watched Brooke begin the race! She killed everyone who started at that time, I think there were 5 other runners that started at that time? She ran those hills like it was so easy, she's amazing! She came in first on that leg, and Adam took it away for the second leg. He had the hardest leg of the whole relay, and he did great! Then Matt took the third leg, and ran so fast he was 2 miles down the road before we found him. Then again, the view at the top where they exchanged was so amazing that we couldn't leave for like 15 minutes, haha. Then Catherine rocked her first leg, and she actually had to run through the highest part of the whole relay, around 9,600 feet. Holy cow! That elevation definitely took it's toll! Then, it was my turn. And the elevation that Brooke, Adam, and Catherine had worked so hard to climb was my job to run down. And man, did that hurt. Steep, 12% inclines for most of the 6 miles. My quads were shaking by the end! But I love downhill running so it was so fun. Then Theresa ran her first leg, and also did a great job. Our team was shaping up to be faster than we expected!! We passed on the baton (a slap bracelet) to Van 2 so they could do their legs, and looked forward to a nap and relaxation for several hours. We quickly drove to Escalante, where we would wait for Van 2 to finish their legs. We ate lunch and attempted to take a nap in the heat. And holy crap was it hot!! Probably around 90 degrees. I slept in the van and kept waking up because I was sweating like crazy. Needless to say, the nap did not turn out how I wanted. Ha ha! 

Before we knew it, it was 6 o'clock and our Van 2 was coming into the exchange. Brooke took it away again and did a very hot, very hilly second leg. We had to stop every mile and pour water over her  so she could cool down. But she still kept going like the rock star that she is! Then we continued through our legs again in the same order. Adam threw up on his run, Matt passed another runner on his, Catherine tackled a pretty big hill, I Ran late at night by the light of the moon on a highway in the middle of nowhere, and Theresa ran through a quaint little town. We finished our 2nd legs around midnight, then again quickly drove forward to the next major exchange in Hatch.

Here's where it got a little crazy. We only about 4 or 5 hours to really get some sleep. The exchange was at the stake center in Hatch, so we though we would set up camp in the grass by the van. Me and Matt found a little patch of grass that looked perfect to sleep on. The sprinklers were on on the front lawn of the stake center, but since our little patch of grass was so small we figured they wouldn't even have sprinklers there. We were proved wrong about 2 hours into our sleep. In my sleep, i heard the steady tch, tch, tch of the sprinkler by my head and felt the water hit me in the face. Cold water+wet sleeping bag+wet pillow and hair+45 degree weather= cranky Leesh. So we quickly grabbed our stuff (I was holding back some choice words by this time) and looked for somewhere else to put our beds. We noticed that the grass right next to stake center was still wet from the sprinklers earlier, so we decided to put down our tarp there and try to get back to sleep in damp bedding. It seemed like we were safe, since the sprinklers had already gone off there, right? Nope. Hour and a half later, I hear it and feel it again. This time it took me longer to figure out what was happening. I rolled out of the sprinklers, still in my sleeping bag, into the cold hard concrete sidewalk next to me. I yelled out "You have got to be effing kidding me!!!???!!??" I debated for a second about staying there and attempting to sleep, but I was so cold and wet! I look over at the tarp, and see that I left my pillow. Whoops. Sopping wet! I also see Matt still laying there, getting more wet, and curled up inside his sleeping bag. In my half-asleep and angry state, I just assumed that he was gonna tough it out and sleep through it. I decide to go use the portapotty and when I come back ten minutes later, poor Matt is standing by the van, in shorts and a t-shirt, dripping wet and shivering. He says sadly, "Why did you leave me there?" I just started laughing and told him I didn't even think about waking him up, I was so delirious! We got back in the van and Catherine laughed at us for not getting in after the first time. We were so cold and wet and shivering like crazy, so she gave us her blankets and sleeping bag.  We turned on the heater and wrapped ourselves in the blankets and sleeping bag until around 6:30, when it was Brooke's turn to start running again. Luckily, we didn't feel too stupid for getting hit by the sprinklers because Brooke, Adam, and Theresa all did too, although we were the only ones to get hit twice. Haha!! 

Saturday: Anyway, after a horrible night of sleep for all of us, we were off again! Since it was our third and final legs, we were ready to get done. We all had relatively short legs this time around. Mine was only 1.7 miles, so the whole time before I was to run I was like, yeah I totally got this! Whatever. The 14 miles from the day before had caught up to me, and I felt like someone was holding me back with a rubber band as I was running, my legs were so sore and my hips were so tight and I was so tired! I eventually made it through that laughably short leg and handed off to Theresa, who commenced on her hardest leg. Very hilly, and on a slightly busier highway than what we had been on previously. However, the scenery was so gorgeous that it made up for it. We stopped every half mile for her this time, because we knew the hills would be pretty hard on her. She took it like a champ and finished off Van 1's journey like a boss. There was even a girl a half mile behind her who tried so hard to catch her, but couldn't! It was awesome. 

Van 1 was done!! We were so excited! We also felt bad for Van 2 because the last 36 miles of the race were on this super gnarly dirt road. We know it was gnarly because I drove the entire thing with our giant van. Definitely and interesting experience but I'm glad I drove because I'm used to driving on dirt roads and also driving big vehicles. We finally got to the finish and they had free showers and food. Uh, did we make it to heaven or what?! The finish was at a resort/lodge just outside Zion National Park. I was a little disappointed that we didn't get to see the actual park, but I'm going in August so I won't complain too much :) Still, they had a pool so we just relaxed by the poolside. I really wish I had brought my swimming suit, because I ended up sitting on one of the pool chairs and sweating and being miserable. They should have had more shade! But, I had a shower and felt refreshed, and we got to talk to and get to know some other runners on other teams, so that was pretty fun. I got a pretty sweet sunburn at the finish, I've had worse. 

Van 2 made it to the finish around 3:45, I think we made it in around 32 hours, and ended up getting 5th or 6th out of 18 teams. Not bad at all!! Van 2 was made up of one family, and they sure were troopers! They had to run in hottest parts of the two days, middle of the night, and on the entire road road at the end. Just awful. But they still great, even the two younger kids. 

All in all, it was a GREAT time. There were so many great moments that it's impossible to recount them all. I will definitely be doing at least one relay race a year (or, you know, as many as I want. Ha ha). It is just such a unique and crazy experience! There's so much I love about relays like this, but this one stands out because of the amazing scenery! I couldn't get enough of it, which is probably why I was so happy the entire time. Anyone that knows me, knows I am at my happiest when I am either running or in the mountains. This combined both, which is why I was on cloud 9 the entire time (minus the sprinklers part, but it made for a great story). 

Next on the agenda:

Finish out the summer semester (only 4.5 weeks left!!)

Havasupai August 2nd-4th

Relaxing for most of August

California with family sometime in August

Zion National Park with the ward 

School starts again Aug 29th

Big Cottonwood Canyon Half Marathon, September 22nd.

Life is good!!