Run, Laurie, Run

This past Saturday, I ran in the Ogden Relay Marathon. It was so much fun. Really! I had been totally dreading it, but was surprised at how much I enjoyed myself since, 1. I am not athletically inclined and have a particular loathing for running, and 2. because when my sister talked me into doing this I couldn't run more than a block before I was winded and trying not to throw up. Luckily, I only had to run five miles, which to all you athletes out there is not much at all, but to me, it was plenty. I spent the entire night before, alternately comforting a fussy Austin and having nightmares of falling flat on my face in front of thousands of people. My team was made up of my sister's sister-in-law, Tiff Ralphs, my sister-in-law, Mikel and my brother-in-law Chad. Four things made the experience truly enjoyable for me:
1. Running down beautiful Ogden Canyon in Spring.
2. Getting to the area I had to sit around and wait for my team member to arrive and discovering that Matt's awesome cousin, Steph would be hanging out there, waiting for her team too. (Nothing makes time fly like chatting with someone fun!)
3. Mikel handing off to me and asking if she could keep running with me, having company was so much better than running alone! (Superwoman Mikel just kept on going and ended up running a total of 19 mi!)
4. The adrenaline rush and accomplishing a goal that seemed way out of my reach only two months before!
Here I am fake running because Matt was parking the car when I actually finished and handed off to Chad. (He thought I would be much slower, but thanks to me trying desperately to keep up with Mikel, we were pretty fast.)
Our team, minus Tiff, who has to race home to feed a starving baby. It was a fun day!