i’m either self-centered, enslaved by the demands of my children, or all the races I’ve gone to with Beckie are starting to blend together. likely all of the above. Not much actual marathon action, but a pretty cool coupla days.

shwag beanbags from the expo. this went on for 30 minutes, G ran about 2 miles, but there was no visible fatiguing effect on The Monsters

outside the pasta buffet

hotel hijinks preventing mommy from a proper night’s sleep

mommy leaving for the shuttle stop at 5am

Red Hills Parkway was closed to thru traffic, but didn’t seem to be a problem with us taking it directly from our hotel to where it intersected the marathon at mile 23.

last 3 miles down into town

the back route to the race weaved around Kayenta sandstone formations on the north side of town,but put us on the wrong side of road closures for meeting Beckie afterwards. Driving back towards the hotel i spotted a trailhead halfway up the twisty road.

G pretended she was finding ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, Alana happily dumped red dirt on her own head

my great little hikers! Pria in the background

the previous afternoon, G was totally stoked to go to a dinosaur museum near the race expo, where some world-class dino tracks were discovered a few years ago. But she decided to be a perfect little shit, throw tantrums, not pay attention to any of the displays, and demand toys from the gift shop nonetheless. Truly it was the worst imaginable caricature of the brat i have engendered, only the predominance of family-friendly LDS folks in the museum kept G from getting torn to ribbons by the masses. She could not believe that we were actually leaving and her behavior had made her such an outcast, it fed a secondary wave of horribleness, followed by a wave of sorrow reflecting on her newfound status as The Family Asshole.

What to do? We proceeded to the expo, and told her we’d start over and she’d get lots of food samples and candy. The expo was short on freebies but thick on deals, so i got some new socks and a sweet mid-weight fleece for about what i saved in not buying G presents at the Dino Museum. She was a really good girl, and periodically asked if we could go back so she could try again to be a good girl, we periodically told her “no sweetheart, you were bad and you need to live with the consequences“, which to a 4-yr old translated to “SHUT UP BITCH!”. i want to be a good dad, i don’t wat to be a pushover, but i don’t want to be the ugly alpha male.

Anyway…hiking the next day, her awfulness was still on her mind. I was kinda glad for it, that some lesson might come from all this. As we were playing dinosaurs during the hike, she kept mentioning the dino museum, and i kept fluffing her asking if she could be a good girl if we went back, and kept telling her how we were walking exactly where the dinosaurs had done 100 million years ago *cue theme from DinoSquad!*. She was stoked, we had more time to kill before the roads opened, so we drove back and asked the nice lady at the register if she’d let us in for 10 min and foster…REDEMPTION AT THE DINOSAUR MUSEUM

T-Rex footprint

free re-entry was greased by a promise to drop some duckets, and from G i extracted the promise that she would sometimes share her pteranodon with Alana, to remind her what being a good girl is all about

we met Beckie, Janna and Rob at their hotel right near the Finish, cause that’s where the beer was, and hung out by the pool for a few hours

The party wound down as all the marathoners started to crash, and i was reminded that my only workout was entertaining children for 11 hours, which while not insignificant, is not a workout. The bike was on the rack and stinky gear from the day before still in the trunk, i rallied to ride back up the marathon course and the Red Hills Parkway to explore some of the trails we spotted earlier. I rolled down and around the City Creek trail, the Heckler locked out and propedal on still made it too big for the mild but pretty red rock trail. It dumped me back in town at the bottom of the road climb, so i did it again as a storm blew a 30 mph headwind in from the south, arriving at the hotel just before the swirling dust and fat wind-whipped drops really started to sting.

what an awesome place for Ultimate

how much incongruity can fit into 1 picture? run what ya brung