To race or not to race

That is the question.  I've been thinking about doing a last minute sign-up for the Utah Valley Marathon.  I've never run this one but it's downhill, fast course is appealing. 

If I do sign up, I won't count on a PR since I'll only have about 8 weeks to train for it.  My mileage is already at about 15 miles so I'm not to worried about increasing it.

Now it looks like we'll be here for the majority of our summer so I may do it.  Yikes!! (excited yikes)

Snowy Trail

Last week, my friend and I decided to run a downhill, half-marathon route to mix things up a bit.  The first 4 miles were beautiful and fast.  Once we hopped onto the river trail portion of our run, we found ourselves running through 2 or 3 feet of frozen, uneven snow.  We weren't the first to run through it--apparent by the other foot/bike prints.  Luckily it was frozen, otherwise our run would have been ruined.

So it was slow-going.  We ended up having to slow to an 11 minute mile pace just to make sure we didn't twist knees and ankles.  The last thing I wanted was an injury in the middle of training. 

2.5 miles later, we hit a frontage road and it felt amazing to be running our normal--even faster--pace.  We had a good fast run and ended up averaging about 8:30 miles including those 11 minute mile early on.

I never post pictures but here are a couple of pictures I took with my phone.