Santa Barbara

This past weekend we took a VERY fun trip up to Santa Barbara with just our little family.  I haven't had this much fun in a long time.  The purpose for the trip was so that I could run the Santa Barbara marathon.  I signed up for it when I was still on a runners high after running the St. George marathon.  I haven't ran much the past couple of weeks so I wasn't feeling very prepared.  But when race day came I was excited!  When Josh dropped me off at 4:30am I started laughing at myself for running this marathon.  Who runs 2 marathons 5 weeks apart?  Im starting to think I am crazy.  The race ended up going really well.  I finished in 3 hours and 52 minutes.  I beat my previous marathon by 1 minute.  Im pretty proud of that minute.  I didn't have very many goals going into the marathon.  I just knew that I wanted to finish in under 4 hours and I didn't want to "hit the wall".  I accomplished both.  I started off a little slower, picked it up in the middle, and slowed it down in the end.  The weather was amazing.  Cool and cloudy with a little rain around mile 18.  The sun came out around mile 23 just as I was running along the ocean.  Amazing.  My body felt great.  I usually get sick after races, but this time was totally different and I felt great.  We ate lunch at a cute cafe on the ocean where we laughed at our view of 3 naked little boys playing on the beach.  After lunch I was able to take a very cold shower at the beach.....yes I showered at the beach.  Our hotel wouldn't allow us to check out late so that I could come back and take a shower.  We finished the day off playing at the beach while Josh surfed.  Im pretty positive it was a near perfect day for our entire family.

So excited to see Josh and the kids!  They were able to see me 3 times on the course.

FINISHED!  Woohoo!

After eating some yummy food!

This little guy loved the beach!  He was so happy the entire time!

He discovered sand....and loved it.