Back from Wasatch Back

My blog is too rushed lately. I want to savor the creation of the sentences, giving you a refreshing literary bite during your information-filled day. But, alas, (love that word!) I am again in a hurry. It is 9:37pm and I am resolved to be asleep way before midnight tonight. So I will try to give you some snippets of writing worth reading. Know that my heart is in it, but my schedule doth not allow time to linger over language. Sigh.

I started my trip to Utah by flying in on a Thursday afternoon. My old pal Emily (we met in Michigan) picked me up from the airport and we went to a park to meet up with Jan and Bethany (also pals from MI). It was fun to see everyone's kids, but the time went by much too quickly. Then Em and I headed up to a dinner in Salt Lake City to meet some more women we would be racing with.
The Wasatch Back is a relay race put on by Ragnar. It's about 188 miles from Logan to Park City on back roads. You have 12 people on your team, and someone is always running. Emily convinced me to do it, and I'm glad she did! Both Emily and Bethany were on my team. It was so fun seeing them again and spending 30+ hours together.

Here's our team, the Energizer Runnies. Part of the fun is getting some crazy costumes together and having a theme. Although I didn't do any part of this, it was kinda fun. Except when creepy men said "Hello, Bunny." Ew. Thanks to the girls who DID go to the trouble to make our team look cohesive. I think it made a big difference. And we were dang cute.

Here's the Suburban where we spent most of our time. I was very familiar with the back seat. Slept a pretty good two hours there.

Here is an exchange point, where runners trade off. This is Bethany trading off to Tiffany. It was fun to cheer your runners on at exchange points, and then hurry on ahead to be ready for the next one. The time passed very quickly when our van was "active." Only one of the two vans is active at a time.At night we were running on unlit roads. Thus, we had to wear a headlamp, a reflective vest, and a flashing LED light. Here's Emily sporting her gear. My second leg (7.0 miles) began at about 3:30am. I LOVED it. It was a fast 5 miles downhill, followed by 2 flat miles. My goal was to do it under an hour and I did. It was so fun to be out in the middle of nowhere with miles of stars above me. I thought I was going to be scared, but I wasn't at all. It was a beautiful night. Ahh, I'd do that again for sure.
This is me after my last leg, a 6.1 mile one on Saturday afternoon. I was pretty tired after just 2 hours of sleep in over 24 hours and not enough food (my fault -- my stomach was upset). I slogged through and came in just under an hour. It started to rain; little did we know how that rain would change the whole experience!

The view from the Suburban. Marianne, Emily, Mandy, and Tiffany. What fun we had!

Here's Bethany rocking "Ragnar", which is a four mile leg that rises in elevation 1600 feet. She ran THE ENTIRE WAY. And I think she was smiling the whole time. It was incredible. There were aspen forests along the way and it was quite beautiful. We were cheering all the runners on out the window. Bethany passed 11 of them on her way up, including some men. She was amazing. The finish. Notice there is no big party going on. The rain spoiled all of that! Emily had to run through a torrential downpour and lightning to make it to the finish. We couldn't pull her off the course because she was on trails and we couldn't get to her. Our team was huddled in the 45 degree weather, freezing cold in our shorts, and we rushed through the finish as fast as possible. It was kind of a depressing end to such a long race. I wanted to eat and celebrate and listen to music. What a bummer. But we did get some nice bling, and I sure hope someone emails me pics of us sopping wet at the finish line soon!

So, are you wondering how we did? I think we were definitely in it more for fun than competition, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out we placed 19th out of 67 women's teams. Not too shabby! I'd definitely like to do a race like this again. It was a very unique experience. And sleeping afterwards was absolutely delightful!

Amy

PS -- Better give a shout out to Kyle, who stayed home with the kids and did a stellar job. The best part? When I got home he said "You need to get away more often. Taking care of the kids is hard. It's constant. They always want something." I couldn't agree more.