St. Patrick's Day 7k

Jacqui and I did a 7k on St. Patrick's Day. It was so much fun! Originally Cody was going to do it with me, but then he had the opportunity to hear Elder Bednar speak to the youth. He also found out that he is not allowed to do 'road races' since he is on a high school track team. My first thought was to see if Jacqui wanted to do it with me, but I wasn't sure if she would want to or not. Jacqui isn't usually into running, but I thought it would be fun for her to do this with me, and she semi-reluctantly agreed.

On the race day it was a little warm out. It actually felt a bit like summer even though technically it was still winter at the time. Jacqui wasn't able to run the whole way. I don't think I would have been able to either, but we gave it our all. She started to tire out around a mile into the race, so I jogged along by her side as she walked for a while. Then I ended up walking too. Jacqui did get little bursts of energy throughout the race, though, and at times we would push ahead. I think we might have jogged for about 2 miles of the race (a 7k is 4.35 miles). I am not sure. We completed the race in 1 hour and 19 minutes. That averaged out to about 18 minutes per mile. We weren't in first place, and we weren't in last place. That was my main goal, not to finish in last place. so I'm happy. It was fun! It was great doing something like this with my daughter. I hope we can do more things like this together in the future. Jacqui said that she had fun afterward. There were some rough patches for her during the race, but she said that she was proud when she finished, and she glowed about it all weekend long. :) I loved seeing that sense of pride and accomplishment within her. I want nothing more than to raise confident daughters, and sons.

John and Raven were supposed to come with us to the race, but they got sick, so they cancelled. They did end up coming back to help us get our car out of the mud, though. We had to park the car in a field, and it got stuck in the mud. We tried to get it out, but we couldn't. I tried calling Rob to see if he could come help, but I couldn't reach him. We tried picking some of the longer weeds nearby to put over the mud to gain traction. That didn't work, and there were so many cars coming in behind us that we could not pull out even if the car would have moved. At the last minute, I had the idea to put some of the paper grocery bags that I had in the trunk behind each of the tires. It worked on the first try. Wish I would have thought of that before John showed up, but we sure did appreciate that he would come and the water that he brought us was wonderful too.

All in all, it made for a memorable day. Hopefully one that Jacqui will never forget. I know I won't. I love you Jacq!