Running Uphill - Big Fun.

I ran in a race today called To Bone and Back. Bone is a little "city" forty miles outside of Idaho Falls. I put "city" in quotes, because there's just a store. That's it. I've never been to Bone, and I pictured maybe a store and a couple of houses or whatever, but it was just a store and a grain silo. I also pictured it being in a hot, dry, flat desert, but it was in these lush, rolling, green hills. Quite a beautiful spot.

Anywho, NO, I did not run the entire forty miles. Though word on the street was that there were some buff guys who did that. I cannot imagine. I was on a team with 8 people - each person ran a five-mile leg. My friend Megann organized it. Here are Megann, her husband, Dustin, our friend Kat, and me, before the race started:

We were the first four joggers on our team, and we all rode in one car, following each jogger. Here's the funniest thing - the baton we passed to one another was a little plastic bone. Kat is modeling it here:

Isn't that funny?

At every pass-off point were port-a-potties, and I was just so dang nervous that I had to pee at every single one. Megann was really nervous, too. But once you get jogging, the nerves go away, and they are replaced with stitches in your side and raggedy breath. The air gets pretty thin up there.


What a gorgeous jog, though. It's nothing but green, rolling hills, spotted with windmills. So beautiful:

We all did so, so well. We surprised ourselves. I ran five miles every few days to get prepared for running such a long distance, and on flat ground, it took me an hour and fifteen minutes every time. My leg of the race was quite hilly, and some of the hills were BRUTAL. I had to walk parts of the steep hills. But then on the down parts of the hills, I got going pretty fast. So those fast parts saved me, as far as time is concerned. I jogged it in an hour!

Here I am waiting my fourth leg mark:

Here is Megann, passing the bone to me:

Dustin said something to make me laugh when they took this picture of me, but I can't remember what, now:

There I am, on the left, walking:

That hill was a KILLER. And it was LOOOOOOOOOOONG. So Karlenn the Wimp walked a couple of times.


And here I am, finally passing the bone off to Kat's sister-in-law:

The Store in Bone is behind that little makeshift tent.


Here is a slideshow of all the pictures we took along the way. I know Megann wanted to blognap them. If you have problems downloading them onto your computer, Megs, give me a call: