Really?! Does it get any better?

Some friends of ours, Rich and Wendi, invited us to join them in Puerto Vallarta for a week-long vacation. They had a condo there they were willing to share with us. Sounded like fun, and have you ever known us to pass up a chance to have fun?!

Good Bye SLC!

These circles were so cool from the air, but I have no idea where they are...somewhere in Mexico.

Flying into Puerto Vallarta

The taxi driver was impressed that we were staying at the Grand Luxxe.

We soon found out why.....

Here is the kitchen. Off to the right side you can see the table, it is the biggest dining room table I have ever seen! It looks like the table that is in the High Council room....if you know what I mean! I can't figure out how to show the size of this place. In order to fit it in the pictures I have to use the wide angle lens, and it messes up the proportions.

This is the bathroom off our bedroom. Rich and Wendi have the master suite, sometime I'll have to get some pictures of their side of the condo.

This is the bedroom we are staying in. This is a king sized bed, just to give you an idea of the size of this room. Out our room, just through the sliding glass doors, on our balcony, is a cooling pool! I though that was kind of weird, but we have spent tons of time in it. So awesome!

(I'm taking tons of pictures with this "soft focus" look to them...my lens fog up every time I go in or out of the condo...it will get better, I promise!)

Here is the Grand Luxxe from the beach. We have a corner condo, from the dark partition over to the middle of the side of this building is ours, so there is the balcony off our room, a corner balcony off Rich and Wendi's room, and then the diagonal balcony off the den off Rich and Wendi's room. Yep, three separate balconies, with amazing views! (third floor)

There are so many swimming pools! Those pools are all that separates us from the ocean.

Our first sunset.

Oh, this is going to be good!

Top of Utah Marathon

Time for another marathon!

This one was called Top of Utah. It starts up at Hardware Ranch. We got to run though the communities of Millville, Hyrum, Providence, Nibley, River Heights, and ended in the city of Logan.

Dean's cousin Danny, and his wife Annette, were kind enough to let us spend the night with them. By staying with them, it saved us 2 hours of driving in the morning, which meant we got to sleep in till 4:15 a.m.! We stayed up and visited with them Friday night. So fun to catch up!

We caught the bus at 5:15 a.m. Just a little cold as you can see by the picture!

First thing after you get off the bus is to go get in the port-a-potty lines. Doesn't matter if you don't need to go, by the time you get to the front of the line, you need to go!

Caught Julie with her pants down. She wrapped an injured knee....yes, this is before the race even starts, ouch!

In between this photo of the port-a potties, and the next picture, which is at the finish line, were so many amazing sites, but I couldn't figure out how to use Dean's camera on his phone, so I'll give you a little description of the next several hours....

5 minutes before the starting gun went off, we strip down to just our running clothes and stow our warm clothes in the bus.. All of a sudden there is this amazing down pour!!! We are totally drenched! The gun goes off. We are running in such a beautiful canyon! The clouds we snuggled down on the mountain tops. It was awesome! A little chilly, but we all know we are going to warm up soon. Then it starts to hail! The hail stings my already frozen hands. Shoes are totally soaked. My shirt is clinging to my body, it's so wet. Next up lighting. The thunder was at almost the same time as the lightning. A little scary, but made it so this run was anything but boring!

Most of the run was done in rain. On the plus side, I wasn't ever hot.

Yay for the finish line cheerleaders!

It feels so good to finally stop running! Everyone had a great race. (Great isn't always defined by the time in which you finish the race, right?) Julie, Dean, and Braden all had great finish times, and Erika finished!

Ej coming to the finish line. One of my best friends, Betsy, and her husband and daughter were volunteering at the finish line. First thing when I crossed the finish line I got a hug from Betsy! No picture of them, but one of the best parts of the race.

It's our tradition to go to Cafe Rio after a long race. None of us really feels like eating, but it's tradition!

We love that Greg has a hot tub! He let's us soak our tired muscles after most races! Thanks Greggy!

Another tradition, taking a picture in our race shirts with our finishers medals. We didn't have time to go home and shower, so Julie and I had "picture retakes".

My parents were kind enough to have us over for a fish BBQ!

(These are the fish Dad and I caught on friday's fishing trip.)

Johnson Canyon training run 9-3-11

The next several posts are going to be out of order. I got so far behind on blogging, and now my cards for my cameras are full, so I'm going to try to catch up over the next several days....we'll see how that goes.

We have wanted to do a long run through Johnson Canyon for a while, and we were on our way to Lake Powell, so we decided to stop in Kanab to run the canyon. This run would be two weeks before the marathon and one week before my bike ride around Bear Lake.

We got up really early to do this run to beat the heat. Ashley drove her car, so we would have a car at the top, and Cristian drove his car, so we would have a car at the bottom....Cristian's car threw a rod and died on our way over to the canyon, so we were really glad we had decided to bring two cars! I had been having some health issues, and wasn't sure I was going to be able to run the "Top of Utah Marathon." I decided that I would run Johnson Canyon, and make my decision based on that run. I don't run at the same pace as Dean, Julie, and Ashley, so I get to run by myself. Here we go.......

Dean, Julie, and Ashley. Here they come....

...there they go. That would be the last I see of them for several hours.

This is how Johnson Canyon looks as the sun comes up.

I was really nervous about this run. Cristian was kind enough to make sure I was ok, so he would drive three miles, and wait for me to run down to him. We would agree on an amount of time it should take me, and if I wasn't there within that time frame, he was to come back and get me. If things were ok, he would drive another three miles, and we continued this down the canyon. Each time I saw the van, I knew I had run another three miles! I can't thank Cristian enough for making this run a possibility for me. I would not have tried this run without knowing that if things went wrong, Cristian would be there soon.

This was so awesome! These pictures are as the sun was coming up.The run was going great and the scenery was amazing.

Time for that peanut butter sandwich I always promise myself on long runs.

This cow kind of looked like he had two bodies. I thought it was a funny picture. When you are by yourself for that much time, you have to find things to entertain yourself!

I tried to take pictures of myself running. That didn't work so well, so this is the best I could come up with.

Our plan was that Dean, Julie and Ashley would run to the bottom of the canyon, and then come back and pick me up. My goal was to get to that gap where the arrow is pointing, before the van came to pick me up.

I made it beyond the gap! I was feeling so good! I ran further than I had planned, and didn't have one bit of pain. (That may be from the Percocet I took before I started the run, but who cares!)

Dean, Erika, Julie, and Ashley.

I was so excited that I had such a great run. "Top of Utah Marathon", here I come!