This story is not about me but my best friend Seth. Seth was a happy-go-lucky kid that loved to help others in any way possible. He always had the biggest smile on his face, even after running 13.1 miles. Seth and I completed our first, and unfortunately our last, race together at the 2012 Big Cottonwood Half Marathon.

The morning of the race, Seth called me asking a bunch of last minute questions. "What time should I get there? How do I get up the canyon? Do I need to bring my bib with me?" Things that he should have had all figured out days in advance, but that was Seth for you! Last minute, not really caring too much about detail, just trying to have a good time, stress-free. So I told him where to go, what to do, how to get on the bus, and to safety pin his bib to his shirt.

A couple hours went by and I had finished and started to look for Seth, but that didn't take long as I find him by the popsicles because where else would he be? He asked me what my time was and I asked his, a standard post race conversation - except Seth didn't keep track of his own time. "I think like 1 hour and 50 minutes or something like that," he told me. So I suggested we look at the table that kept track of everyone's official time. We stood there for a good ten minutes looking through all the participants trying to find Seth's name but we couldn't find his time. Finally I asked him what his bib number was. "Oh I don't know it's in the car." “What do you mean it's in the car?" I asked him. As it turns out, Seth was in such a hurry to get to the race he just left all of his belongings in the car, including his race bib with the timing chip attached. "I didn't think I needed it!" He just laughed it off.

On January 6th, 2013, Seth Albrecht was killed in a car accident. He was 20 years old. Seth had always talked about how much he loved running and he had planned to make the 2013 Big Cottonwood Marathon the first full marathon he would compete in. Unfortunately Seth wasn’t able to do that, so we decided as his friends and family to take his accident as motivation and to run the race in his honor. We wore team shirts and sweated it out just for him. We love you so much Seth, and wish you were here to run the race with us! Rest in peace buddy.