Wasatch Back 2010!

I first heard of the Ragnar Wasatch Back Relay last summer and thought it sounded really neat! If your not familiar with it, it can be thought of as an 188-mile running party (Logan to Park City UT) with 12 best friends. You start running early Friday morning, then all day and all night and through the next morning until you finish. Teams of 12 runners each run three legs of the relay while rocking out to live bands, enjoy wacky participant costumes, and make life-long friends with teammates and competitors. My explanation really doesn't do it justice, but this link will give you more of an idea of it.

So about the time that I was writing this October post last year (and was six months pregnant), my good friend Linsey in Salt Lake City was also putting together a team to enter the 180 mile relay that would take place that summer. When she invited me to join her team I eagerly accepted!

It may have been a little ambitious of me to be so eagar to want to run in this relay, but I can now say that I've done it! In reality, it wasn't the running that was the tough part (I ran three legs of four miles each in about a 26 hour time frame) it was the logistics of flying out to Utah and taking care of/ trying to figure out who to watch her while I ran- 5 month old that nearly killed me! Good thing she's so cute and made it worth it. I'll spare the details, suffice it to say that I think my dear husband is more of a saint now that ever before with how he endlessly supported me completing this and working out the never ending details. And a million thanks to my sister Shannon, my friend Linsey, and Brant's brother and brother's wife Kyle & Amanda for helping me with details and hosting us!

My first four mile leg - your team leap frogs you in the team van while you run to support and give you water.

With part of the team just after finishing my second four mile leg. This was my favorite leg. I had the baton passed to me and started at 9pm and ran for an hour while it got dark. All that was on the road was me, darkess, and the headlamp and reflective vest I was wearing. When I would look behind me, all I could see were the quiet floating lights of the headlamps of the other runners behind me.

On to leg three for me - 9am the next morning to finish my last four mile leg. So maybe I'm not really a natural runner and was a little tired and walking by this point...

But kept on chugging to finish my last leg!

Some of the awesome scenary (notice all the team vans).


And more scenary along the relay (that was our team vehicle - we were team "Huffin and Puffin")

And finished at last! I'll have to photoshop myself into this team photo (duty called as a mother at the time this was taken).

Since Linsey was the only one I knew on the team to begin with, I got to meet some great new friends during the relay. Awesome job ladies - Wasatch Back 2010 was a success!!