St. George Marathon

Dawson woke up at 3:30 this morning to go board the Marathon buses to ride up to Central where the race was to begin at 6:45 am. He said it was very cold at the start but the city had bon fires in barrels and the racers wore sweats to try and keep warm until start time. The wheel chair racers started off first and then the athletes were started off by their anticipated finish time.

Dawson was running with several of his friends from high school including Josh Decker and Mason Van Orden. Josh had ordered them matching uniforms only in different colors. Dawson had trained to some degree running about three days a week but only hitting 13 miles as the farthest distance. But we all know that Dawson is a winner and a strong competitor and he was awarded Athlete of the Year at DHHS last year so we should have expected nothing less than a great performance.

Dawson ran a strong race for a first timer. He started about 12 minutes after the first runners. It was a cold start but he said that the scenery was magnificent as he watched the sun start to rise as he passed the volcano and when he went around the corner and saw Snow Canyon State Park that it was very beautiful. He took water or Gatorade at every station and had one gel boost. His stomach was a little upset and he had to stop at the porta john twice which slowed him down some.

With 7,200 runners this year, there was a lot of traffic on the course. We had to park clear down in Grandma's parking passed the temple. We got to about one block before the finish line and only watched for 15 minutes before Dawson crossed. We saw his Priest leader, Dace Goulding cross, Josh Decker, his friend, Matt Ferguson and of course many other triumphant racers. Several had to be helped across the finish line by the police who were riding the course on their bikes and many fell into the arms of the national guardsmen at the finish line.

Dawson looked happy and strong as he came running down the last few steps. He finished with a time of 3:33, which was pretty cool because it was the 33rd annual St. George Marathon! He came in 8th place out of his division ages 14-18 but was the first one from St. George in that division.

Congratulations Dawson! Well done!