24th of July

Time to catch up with what's been going on at the Snedakers! For the 24th of July, my sis-in-law Candace invited the sisters to run with her in the Deseret News 10K. Now what you all need to understand is that Candace is a great runner and I am SO not. But because I've always wanted to have a near death experience like this at least once in my life, I said "Wow, that sure sounds like fun!"... Well, Melissa and I finished!!! We did it in 1hr and 25 min. Not bad considering Melissa is expecting and we hardly trained at all! The best part of the whole thing was that the run route came in through the downtown parade route. There were masses of people that had slept on the sidewalks to get a good view of disc jockeys and prom queens riding in fancy cars waving at them (I'm a parade buff-can't you tell?). They actually got out of bed and stood on the corner cheering us on and applauding us in droves! What an amazing feeling! Complete strangers and random kids would stand in the middle of the runway handing us water. As one little girl about 7 or so held out a cup for me, I gave her a heartfelt panting of "Thank you sweetie". I looked back at the little girl who handed me the cup and I could see her look at her mom like she just saw Santa or something. Her mom looked at her so pleased at how she was helping and winked. What a moment. It was truly community. The whole run seemed like it was in slow motion, not only because that's about how fast I run, but just because of the beauty of the moment. Families together enjoying a cool summer morning, people of all shapes and sizes accomplishing lofty goals, parents and kids running together and most of all people sharing joy-together. Next year Logan says he'll run with me. I still don't consider myself a runner but Logan, I can't wait buddy.