Reach The Beach

Holy Cow! What a weekend!

I celebrated my 1 year running anniversary in a way I would have never imagined- in a van, with 6 people, following another van of 6 people, and cumulatively running 200 miles between the 12 of us.

This wasn’t any run of the mill race, this was an disgusting, sweaty, exciting, sometimes amazing race like experience. Going into it, I thought I was going to have no issues at all, I was only running 13 miles, I’ve ran farther- PLUS it was was broken into 3 legs, so it had to be easier.

False. What I didn’t consider was that with each leg; I had less sleep and less food. It also gets harder and harder each time you have to amp your body up during a short period of time.

34 Teams finished this race, it took us 31:42:18, that amount of time came with a lot of emotions, a lot of crabbiness and a lot of new friendships.

Thursday night we got to the start of the race, but first we had to pick up Megan, who was sitting in an empty church parking lot, in the dark .

She had some monstrous hills so it’s a good thing she wasn’t murdered in that parking lot- I don’t think anyone else would have run them for her.

The morning of the race everyone got the inevitable lesson of just how important coffee is to my morning routine.

Dave started us off, with a 2 mile, very speedy run.

And then our van went out to breakfast.

I was the second runner in van 2- so I was runner 8. This means that even though our race started at 9:30 am, I didn’t actually run until 3pm. That’s a lot of time to sit around and dread the inevitable. All of my runs went well, and shockingly, they each got faster than the last.

Marking off my leg on the van

Each of my runs had some scary components. During my first leg I ran through a pitch black tunnel, going with traffic and almost got hit by a few trucks. My second leg was at 2 am, through the woods, and past two cemeteries. During mile 1 my music died and every noise I heard turned into a serial killer. My final leg was alongvery busy roads, with no shoulders.

Me being terrified that Isaac was going to run right into me.

See, this isn’t your every day, closed course race, or even your every day run. You followed signs the whole way, and hoped you didn’t miss a turn (a few of our runners did). You also had to constantly be aware of what you were eating, or not eating, and if you were drinking enough water. For me, I knew that the the half pan of brownies I ate was going to be an issue, but oh well. I was hungry.

Mecca makes the best brownies.

Van 2

Van 1 showing off that they’re completely done!

Eventually, we didReach The Beach, and it was 100% worth it.

And now I have a bright shiny medal to show for it.

We had a lot of fantastic sponsors for this event, and every day I’m going to focus on reviewing one of the products. Having their support cut down on so many costs for us, and made this a little more stress free.

What did you do this weekend?
Have you ever done a relay?
Would you ever consider doing one?

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