embrace the pain

As promised, we had something fun come up... that is if running 188 miles from logan to park city for 28 hours in a van with 6 other people as part of a 12-man/woman team, getting minimal amounts of sleep, excruciatingly sore muscles, heat exhaustion, and sunburns all fall into your category of fun. Crazy what we'll do to get a weekend away from the kids! wink! (A HUGE thanks to GR and GR H who made it possible for us to have this much fun, and even keep the kiddos an extra night so we could have a solid night sleep to recover... if it's possible).

So Clark and I ran the RAGNAR WASATCH BACK relay. It really was fun (most of the time!). I've been wanting to do this race for a few years and I missed out last year being pregnant and all, so this year we got to do it together. Clark's bro was supposed to be on our team but had to back out a week ago after discolating his shoulder... twice. (I guess we'll let him off the hook for that one). So I called up my turbo running friend, Andrea, and she was quick to fill the spot and we weren't sorry to have her!! We had a great team, we ran with some of the folks Clark used to work with at Rio Tinto. Our team name was, "one less appendix this year". last year, one of the girls on the team keeled over on the last mile of her last leg... she ended up having to have an appendectomy. But she was back at it again this year and we're happy to report she made it the whole way with all her vital organs intact!!!

Each of us ran 3 legs of the 188 mile strech. I was runner number one, starting us off in Logan with a 5 mile run, and handing off to Heather. Clark was runner #5 and started his day off with a gnarly 7.5 mile run all uphill in the heat of the day on a dusty dirt road. He did awesome! After that we had a while to hang out while the rest of our team completed their legs. We met up with the rest of our team in Snowbasin later that night around 6:30pm where i took off on my second leg. This time it was one mile straight up, followed by 7.5 miles straight down hill over the top of trappers loop and into Mountain Green. It was right as the sun was going down and it was SOOO scenic and beautiful, and the temperature was perfect. I could have run all night if my legs weren't going to give out on me at any minute! Clark's next run was an hour or so later running through Morgan, UT. Our van finished up at East Lake around 1130 pm, and from there we cruised up to crash for a few hours at the cabin to shower, have some mac n cheese, and catch a couple hours of sleep... on an actual bed! It was great. What wasn't great however, was not realizing we had a dead phone line at the cabin and our other van had been trying to reach us for a couple of hours to tell us to get going. By the time we reached them, we had about 15 minutes to get from the cabin to our next exchange. We pulled in right as the runner was ready to pass off to me! So i set off on my last 5 mile leg from Oakley into Kamas. Funny how this run which was labled "easy" was actually my most difficult leg of the whole thing. I think I could have crab crawled faster than I shuffled through those 5 miles. It wasn't pretty... but I made it and as runner #1, I was the first one in our team to be DONE running for the event. I pretty much crashed in the back of the van while the rest of our runners finished up their legs as well. Unfortunately, I was passed out and missed Clark's awesome last run... he killed it! By the time Andrea, the last runner in our van finished up, we had a few hours to kill while van 2 finished up their legs... so we indulged in a yummy warm breakfast at a cute little cafe in Heber... so yummy! By 3:00, this afternoon we were all gathered together as a team in park city cheering on our last runner as she came to the end and we were all able to run across the finish line together!

Crazy as it sounds, we had such a blast!!! We had great people on our team, and thankful to say no injuries or incidents of any kind (only a close encounter with a deer).