Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

Clouds of smoke billowed upwards to blot out the sun. The race was on, flames licking at my feet. I was in the groove, running fast, strong and steady, not feeling the heat.

I rubbed my eyes, straining to see what was ahead.

Slowly sleep left, replaced by the sight of the cool mist of a spring morning hanging delicately over the valley below. It promised to be a perfect day. Except one thing…

It was the half marathon today. Rolling over to look at the clock, I knew I had missed it.

It's Saturday Centus again. Mrs. Jenny gave us a photo of the Gladiator fire in Arizona as the prompt this week. 100 words, no extra photos. Wait! Did she say no extra photos?! Nah, I'm sure I misread that part.

OK, only one...because that's the rule for MY blog...at least one of my own photos. I'm sure she won't mind. 

Be sure you check out what the other Centusians have to say about all that smoke by clicking HERE. 

And by the way, congrats to all those who DID run the Ogden Marathon and 1/2 Marathon today. Wish I'd been out there with you.

Powder Puff

It was the "old ladies" versus the young women. Us old girls, we had something to prove and we weren't going to be shown up by a bunch of hot shot cuties in their teens. (Now mind you...when I say WE, that doesn't mean I had much of anything to do with the result here.. hard to do anything with 5 minutes of time on the field...I'm the photog, after all). You go girls (you old girls, that is!)!! (Oh, and you young women, you know we love you...and that's why we risked being completely humiliated by you...so if you just let us win, well, good on ya!!)

There are more ways than one to enjoy a football game!

Oh mom, do we really have to sit and watch? I'm soooo tired. 

It DOES say "Do some damage!"

Don't let the tutu fool you...Nicole's one tough cookie. 

 A score for the young women!

 Go Cami...take it to the fence!

Natalie makes another of many sweeping plays, with her daughter on her heels. 

 The ballet play...

 

Chelsea scores the first TD of the game and gets the "Old Women" on the board!

Isn't there a penalty for too many players on the field? 

 V I C T O R Y!!!

To view the complete unedited set of photos, click here. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13110897@N05/sets/72157627903814272/

Lance Comes to Town

The Xterra National Championship race was held near here this past weekend. It's a short but rather extreme triathlon - 1 mile swim in Pineview Reservoir, 20 mile bike from the lake to Snow Basin Ski resort on a steep and rugged trail, then a 6.2 mile trail run through the beautiful woodsy hills where we ski in winter.

When we learned that Lance Armstrong was running, we decided to go and try to catch the finish...in particular, HIS finish. Lance just turned 40 a few weeks ago, and hadn't run a triathlon for about 20 years. Nonetheless, he's super fit and a true competitor, so we figured he'd be arriving at the finish pretty dang fast. We were right about that, and in fact,  we underestimated his performance, and almost missed seeing him.

He has a loyal following, so the finish area was crowded, his fans dispersing quickly once he came in. Had we arrived 5 minutes earlier I would have been able to position myself for a better shot, but oh well. I got what I got.

Lance finished a very respectable 5th place coming in at 2:29:25 (the overall winner finished in 2:24:25)...I'm not sure Lance  thought it was all that respectable, but I was impressed.

We stuck around long enough to see the first of the women come in. Watching them was inspiring. 

The women's winner, Melanie McQuaid from Canada, finished strong (2:43:0) but not without some pain. 

She didn't seem the least bit fazed by it.

 

The second place finisher, Leslie Patterson, also finished strong and with a huge smile on her face.

One of the XTerra favorites, Shonny Vanlandingham, tore her ACL shortly before the race, but competed anyway...wearing a brace..and smiling from ear to ear!! I'm sorry, but am I the only one who thinks it would have been a crazy race WITHOUT such an injury?! And how did she finish? 7th with a time of 2:54:16! I probably would have just been getting out of the water at that point...haha.

At events like this, spectator watching is nearly always as good as the event itself. This was my fave...Bette Midler meets Stephen King's "IT" ...frightening. And if you look closely, another tat behind her ear...I want to interview her. Really, I do. "Tell me, dear, what WERE you thinking?"

It was fun. It didn't make me want to go out and do a triathlon. It did make me want to come back up to Snow Basin and photograph the rapidly changing colors...which we did this afternoon. And so now, if you've had enough of XTerra, fall colors coming your way....

Working on my abstracts, as you can see, and too tired to pick just one or two favorites...

 ...a hornets nest the size of a cantaloupe

...and at the end of the day, one pooped pup...G'night Jake. G'night all.