In my last post, I wrote about running on Utah Lake. When I got home I was on such a high, that I just had to write about it … if you don’t know by now, this is the way I do things :). I wrote a quick blog about it and that was it. I had the fleeting thought that I should submit it to Deseret Connect, which is where most of my stories that get published in the Deseret News and KSL, generate from.

Most of my stories have been picked up, but I really didn’t think that this one even had a chance. I thought it was a little too “bloggy,” and not my best work by a long shot. I submitted it anyway, and within minutes I got an email saying that my story was being picked up, and within the hour it was edited, and then I got a phone call from the editor asking me to add a few more safety tips. The story was published the next day and made the front page of ksl.com. The story was actually my original blog post, but when I got word that it was being published, I quick, changed my blog, so that when the readers clicked on the blog they wouldn’t read the same exact thing they did in the article.

That night, Adam took our oldest to the Jazz game and I took the 4 younger kids to our local pizza place. While there, I got a call from my friend, Becky, who also ran with me in the ice. She said that she was listening to KSL News Radio, and they were talking about it and had a Search and Rescue guy weighing in on the article. He actually said that he thought it sounded pretty fun!

Since then, it has been a little nuts. I was contacted by a writer at BYU’s news paper, The Universe, asking to interview me about it. They did a write-up here.

There have been upwards of 50,000 views on the KSL site, which may seem small to most, but that is crazy nuts to me.

Today, I woke up to a flood of emails again, and found that utahlake.gov had done a story on it, too. By the way, they did a great job of sprucing up the picture. My camera kept on freezing and I was lucky to have gotten any pictures at all. Not to mention, the inversion was so bad. Their editing makes it look sunny … which it was not … at all. They also alluded to the fact that my kids are extra wiggly during the winter, and I think they got that idea from my latest column on combating cabin fever.

before

After

I feel a little silly because I was not the first to have done this, and it wasn’t even my idea. I’m just crazy enough to admit that I would do something like this, and have it published on  a mainstream media source :).

Really, though it has been such a positive thing. Because of the buzz that it generated, I was able to have that phone conversation with the ksl editor, and now I am going to be writing regularly for ksl.com’s Motherhood Matters and Happy Living sections, which is really so awesome!

I will still be writing for the Spectrum and The Daily Herald. This just adds to my work load, and I love it!

Funny how things work out. Really so grateful 🙂