Steve and Kristin do a Marathon

Last weekend Steve and I did the Salt Lake Marathon, but we did it on bikes because we’re not crazy. We want our knees to keep on functioning for a long-long time. We were participants in the 6am bike tour marathon.

We decided to do it months ago and did some heavy recruiting amongst friends and family. We ended up with a group consisting of Me, Steve, Missy, Randy, Ryan, Scott, Hayley, and Charlie.

Race day started out at 4am with showers and full hair and make-up. No reason not to be gorgeous. We got out the door at 4:45am. I felt surprisingly peppy. Normally I feel like throwing up when I have to get up so early.

After leaving the house, we met up with Missy and my bro’s and caravanned to the Start-line. Thanks to the miracle cell phones we found Randy and the Charlie and Hay once we got there.


We waited for just a few minutes at the start line. It was just enough time to find each other take a few pictures. If you don't take pictures, it's like it never happened.

Getting past the start line was a little nerve racking with 1500 bikers all tightly packed together beginning at the same time. There for a few minutes it seemed like major bike wreck was imminent. What we really wanted to avoid a massive 6 am amateur biker pile up. Amazingly after about ten minutes of breaking and swerving we all stayed up on two tires.

The only problem we had was Scott’s bike chain fell off first thing. Somehow he got out of the river of bikers, fixed his chain and caught up with us before any of us even knew he was having a problem. You go Scotty.

It was very dark at 6am when the race started. I had no idea it would be so dark still. I assumed the sun would at least be peering over the mountain tops, but no, it was dark like midnight, which made it even scarier as we made our way out of the pack.

I should mention that it was very very cold. I think they said it was like 38 when we started and 40 when we finished. But guess what….38 feels a lot colder when you are cruising on your bike.

I brought a hat to wear until the race started, but it was so cold I kept it on when it started and put my helmet over the top and just rode. I attempted to take it off once during the tour, but I quickly pulled over and put it back on. It never did get warm.

I was really glad that we decided the night before to take cold weather precautions. We bought me some Under Armor long pants and long sleeved shirt. Steve wore some thermals under his shorts. We weren’t going to do either of those things until just the night before. I am really glad we did because we would have been totally miserable otherwise.

The sun started to show after about twenty minutes and then it really started to get fun. We really made this event what it was intended to be, a bike tour. It was so cool to see all the detail normally missed when driving 50 miles an hour past all these places.

The detail was pretty spectacular. Blossoming trees, hidden driveways and the smell of growing trees and flowers were some of the highlights. Seriously we would ride under these blossoming trees and it smelled exactly like bubble gum. I don’t know what kind of trees they were, but I want some in my yard.

Our group quickly dissembled after the race started. It was very hard to keep a group that size with varying biking ability and equipment together. For the most part though Steve and I (surprising I know) and Missy all stuck together.

Our race bibs were 78 (me) and 79 Steve that’s how we referred to each other during the race.


Most of our group tried for their best times and finished way ahead of us. They waited for us at the finish line and we had a few photo ops.

All in all we had a great time. We thought for all the bad publicity the race organizers got in the few weeks before the race that there would be some visible problems, but other than the seriously ugly race shirts they gave us, it turned out to be pretty well organized after all.

We'll do it again next year for sure. In June we are planning to do 75 miles on the MS-150 benifiting Multiple Sclorosis research. 75 miles…YES we can! Who is with us??? If you won't ride....will you donate money so we can? Each rider has to raise like $200 bucks to participate.

Here we are with our bikes strapped to the back of the car after hauling our bikes back to the start line via the public transportation system. I've never felt so green.

Here are some other picture highlights: