Are you ready for this?!

Here I go... I'm going to post about the Red Rock Relay. Here is your advanced warning that this is THE longest blog post I have ever written. It has taken me 2 days to write it. It may take you a little less time than that to read it. It has way too many details. It covers what we did, how I felt about it, what was fun, and what was down right CRAPPY. My potty mouth has recovered a little over the week, so I refrained from using an offensive expletive there! I was leaning toward the "sh" word or "f'd up", but see, I'm recovering. ;) But this event was a big deal for me and it taught me a lot. So all these details are for me... to help me remember... and I'm not going to apologize for it. But don't say I didn't warn you.

The story starts on Wednesday when I decided to call Emily and see if she was game to drive down with me on Thursday night so we could drive back together on Saturday night after the race. This decision was made after hearing enough crap from Paul to the tune of, "Why are you staying a whole extra night? Whose idea was this? The race is done at like 12:00 on Saturday... you won't be home until Sunday afternoon?!" After I set up this little carpool situation, I told Paul of our change of plans and he didn't say much about it after that. (this part of the story will add to the dramatic effect on Saturday evening).

On Thursday, I went in to work up in Draper for a few hours and managed to make it home by 1:30ish. At 2:30, I got a voice message from Emily saying she got called in to work until 11:00pm that night and that she'd just drive down by herself after work. This basically freaked me out (and in turn, Tina) because at best, I knew Emily would be starting this race WICKED tired and at worst, she could bail on us. After I got to talk to her, we knew she wasn't going to bail (cuz she's awesome like that) and I got a ride down to Cedar City with the rest of our van. That evening consisted of driving up to the Brian Head resort to get registered, getting dinner at Sizzler, grocery shopping for all the van food, and then ending up at Emily's parent's house to get a little sleep. Emily didn't end up getting there until 2:00ish, the poor thing! I'm so glad she made it safely.

Friday morning, bright & early at 5:30, Tina came and picked us up so we could be at the starting line by 6:30. Here's a picture of our team at the starting line (for the record, it was really cold up there that early!)

Here we have Julie, Joanie, Tina, April, Diana, and Emily

Tina was our first runner and she got to start off with a ride up the ski lift, followed by a 3.7 mile run down the mountain on a trail. Julie rode up the lift to send her off and thus began the process of waiting for your teammate! Tina's 1st leg here was all by her onesie, so unfortunately, we couldn't cheer for her until we saw her coming toward the exchange... way to start us off strong, Tina!


Then she quickly handed off to Joanie who was lucky (?) to get to run her hardest leg first. Honestly, there is nothing lucky about running this leg at all. 6.1 miles on trails around the resort with no van support where she had to run UP a HUGE hill, and then UP a MONSTROUS mountain that just kept climbing and climbing. Apparently, it sucked so bad that when she got to this handoff with Julie, she said, "I just want to flip all of you off!"


Julie's first leg wasn't much better considering her 1.9 miles was 100% uphill. Only consolation, it was short. Julie being the rock star that she is, ran probably 99% of the way. As we were waiting and taking silly pictures of ourselves, other vans were telling us they couldn't believe that Julie ran the whole thing. She does admit to walking some of it, but nobody witnessed that part! Here comes Julie, followed by the handoff to April.


April's 1st leg was a long one too. An even 6 miles that was theoretically labelled as "moderate". We quickly learned that these ratings of hard, moderate, or easy were really a bunch of bull-pucky considering there wasn't an easy leg in the entire course. This leg included "rolling hills" which is a nice way to say, "you're going to be running uphill a lot, with an occasional flat break." My favorite part of this leg? Seeing THIS:

How beautiful is that? Later, I got to see it from below as I ran down the mountain on the other side.
April did an awesome job with this difficult leg, especially considering her asthma. Here she is handing off to Emily who was ready for her 2.5 mile run down the canyon!
See? Ready to fly... and fly she did!

We stopped at some bathrooms we had passed earlier (bathrooms were an important part of this story's plot, but I'll spare the details) and by the time we got alongside Emily as she ran, she was seriously almost finished. This freaked me out because I hardly had any time at the transition to get myself mentally ready. Emily totally rocked this first leg of hers, but unfortunately, it tweeked her knee pretty bad. None of us properly trained for the climbing and downhill running we experienced on this thing. Before I knew it, Emily was there handing me the slap-bracelet, and my gps watch, and off I went!



My first mile was actually uphill, even though I'd prepared myself mentally for an all downhill run. Once I crested the hill, my descent down the canyon commenced and it was a while before it ended. I had to wear the reflective vest because this canyon had ZERO shoulder to run on. Another issue is that there was a TON of traffic, so it wasn't like I could just run on the road until a car was coming, because a car was always coming! I enjoyed a little light sprinkle of rain as runner after runner passed me by. Apparently, many of the teams must have given their stronger runners this leg of mine with the most miles, because every stinkin runner that made me their "roadkill" (nice term, huh?!) was either a fast dude or one of those tall, skinny chicks built to run! After being roadkilled the fifth time, I wanted to scream, "where are all the other chubby chicks running this race?" Anyway, with the help of my iPod and gravity, I made it 6.5 miles down the canyon in exactly 1 hour. For ME, this was a decent time (my average pace was 9:13). Tina started at 7:00 am and I finished right around 12:30.


Once I got to the exchange, I got to hand off the bracelet to Cami, Tina's youngest sister and the first runner in the other van. Since our van was done, we headed down to Cedar City to get some food at Hogi Yogi and stop at Emily's parents house again. During this first set of legs, we had our 5 gallon water cooler tilted over our bags, and with Murphey's law lurking around each turn of this race, pretty much all my clothes (and a few of Julie's) got soaked as it leaked all over. I threw my clothes in the dryer and went ahead and for the benefit of my teammates, took another quick shower. I'm convinced I smell worse than most people after sweating for an hour straight, so for my own peace of mind, I took advantage of the fresh start! We sat around chillin for a while until my clothes were dry and we piled back into the van to go ride the routes that Tina's sisters had to run.

Driving these legs seemed to take FOREVER!! First of all, 3 of the legs were straight uphill. The mountain they climbed was called diablo, and a little devil it was. These legs were shorter, but extremely difficult. By the end of their climbing, we ended up all the way up here:

I'm glad I got to the top while riding in a van and NOT while walking up it (no WAY I could've run those 2 mile stretches!)

Then, the 5th and 6th runners got the pleasure of running over 7 miles each along a dirt road through an aspen forest. We drove this super slow because we didn't want to kick up dust all over the runners. During this time, it started to DOWNPOUR and HAIL on poor Kara and Ann. Kara had some ugly welts on her legs from the hail hitting her as she ran... plus, their shoes were all dirty and mud was splashed all over their legs.


We had plenty of time to stand around and wait for the van exchange. We took a bunch of pictures and not surprisingly, I look like an idiot as I make my scissor mafia gang sign! Here's Tina stretching and getting ready to get us started again at around 6:00 pm. She's so sassy!

Tina had to go 6.7 miles, some of which was on a dirt road. I'm pretty sure she ran the whole thing and came in with a good time! Awesome job, Tina! As she finished her leg, we picked her up and entered into Zion's National Park and had to drive a ways before we could let Joanie out to start her next leg. Joanie took off to run a 2.7 mile stretch that was mostly flat or slightly downhill. She ran this quickly and looked LOTS happier finishing this leg than she did her first one! See that happy smile!?

We all had some happy smiles at this point because this area was SO BEAUTIFUL! I'd never been down to Zions, so it was a neat little adventure to get to drive through it.

Joanie handed off to Julie who proceded to KILL her 2nd leg of 6.6 miles with a flat to downhill grade! I KNOW she ran this whole leg and kept her pace under 9 minutes the whole way. She admits to pushing it too hard and paid the price through the night feeling pretty nauseated. It was a very impressive run, though, especially considering how many times she had to change her stinking headlamp (at least 4-5)! It was really dark by the time Julie ran and finished her turn, so any pictures taken demonstrated the effectiveness of the reflective vests we were wearing! I did get a good picture of what happened to my glasses sometime during this part of the race!

Julie handed off to April, and once again, the difficulty of her leg was very misleading. She had 6.5 miles that were supposed to be easy and flat, but it was a mild but steady bit of climbing. Plus, she started having an allergic reaction to something halfway through and struggled because of that. I can imagine that it's harder to run uphill and breathe when your throat starts closing in on you... don't ya think? She finished it though, and I was very proud of her. Both of her running legs at this point had been long and very challenging.

Basically, the leg that April ran up, Emily got to run down (6.5 miles). She started off strong, but because her knee was hurting a bit, she walked more of it than she wanted to. But the times she walked, she had a nifty speed walk going on, so she still did it in a decent time. Emily enjoyed some lovely rain and quite the downpour there for a little while. Luckily for me, by the time she finished, the rain had lightened up a lot, so I didn't have to stand out there getting drenched.

Once Em handed off to me in the town of Virgin River, it was about 11:40 and I took off running through some neighborhood streets until hitting a highway that would take me to La Verkin. I had told my van to meet me about halfway, since I had my hydration belt and was stocked up with jelly beans if I needed something. It was a pretty solitary run with very few cars either coming or going. I even managed to freak myself out a little wondering if there were any coyotes in the area. Occasionally, I'd see another team's van up ahead and would hope that maybe MY teammates decided to wait for me there at the top of this hill! But it wasn't them. I ran about 3 miles before they found me and a good 2 miles of it was up hill. This is when I started getting passed up by other teams again, especially once I finished the hill and started the 2.5 mile downhill stretch that finished off this leg of the race (and my right hip and shin for that matter... they were already feeling it from my first downhill run on a slanted surface). I think 6 people passed me up just flying down that hill, and even though I had gravity on my side, I just could NOT kick it into a higher gear! I was keeping my pace at about 10:30 - 11:15 minute miles, but couldn't push it any lower! So aggravating! This was the first time I'd ever cried out in pain from running. 13 miles in one day, a lot of it being downhill, was taking its toll. I was molified a little, though, when the full moon came out to smile at me during the point I needed it most.

I finally made it into town and handed off to the next van at about 12:45 in the morning. I needed more time to stretch out, but my teammates were wanting to get to the rec center as soon as possible. We drove the route the other van would be taking and it started to rain really hard again. I listened to some classical music (Rutter's Requiem in case you care!) in order to detox my spirit a little as we drove and drove. It took a good 45 minutes to get to the Washington rec center and by the time we got there, I was in one crazy state of pain (muscular & intestinal), fatigue, and total exhaustion. We lucked out and found the empty child care room where I quickly staked claim on the love sac in the corner so Emily and I could share it. I changed my clothes, used the bathroom, downed a cliff bar, and crawled into my sleeping bag.
I was OUT...
...
...
until I was so rudely awakened by an announcement over the intercom that the rec center would be closing in 5 MINUTES and that we needed to leave!!! WTF!! This was at 4 freakin o'clock in the morning! We'd gotten a little less than 2 hours of sleep. It was at THIS point that we found out that the other van on our team had broken down at about 2:00 am and Tina had left with OUR van (okay, HER van) to go help them out. Other teams had helped our teammates get to their respective handoff points (where they got to sit there in the middle of the night, WAITING for an hour or more, ALONE, in the POURING RAIN, with LIGHTNING crashing right over their heads, in the areas where we were warned to watch out for COYOTES!!!!!) One of Tina's sisters was ultimately hoping that her headlamp would stay on long enough for them to find her dead body; she was so scared. They weren't sure of the name of the towing company that came and towed off their van with all their luggage and food in it. Once they were done running, most of them had to go to Wal-mart and buy new clothes, since they didn't have anything to change into and what they were wearing was soaking wet. We felt SICK just thinking about what they went through. And then, there we were sitting outside the rec center, needing to use the facilities inside, sitting in the woodchips to stay out of the rain, waiting for Tina to make it back so we could get ourselves changed and mentally ready for our last turn to run.

Poor Tina... our fearless captain got about 15 minutes of sleep that night. She also had the stress of it being her SISTERS stuck out there in the rain. On top of that, she was our first runner and she had 6.1 miles to conquer. We left her at the van exchange while we went to Wal-mart to use the bathroom and get a few things. I picked up some batteries and a rolling pin to roll out my muscles. Once we were done at Wal-mart, we backtracked in order to find Tina before she had to run through a pitch black park trail. Thankfully, there was another runner from another team right with her and they agreed to stay together through those last 3 miles. This was a blessing for Tina, but also a curse because it meant that she HAD to continue running the whole way, even though she wanted to walk some of it. I bow in reverence to what Tina went through in all those agonizing hours. She really showed herself, and all of us, what she is made of. I was (and AM) amazed by her! This is a picture of her detoxing a little.

So, to continue with some drama, Joanie was supposed to be our next runner, but because of some SEVERE abdominal pain she was having because of a galbladder problem, she'd taken a Lortab that morning. It knocked out the pain, but it also knocked her out almost completely! So April ran Joanie's leg in order to give Joanie more time to recover. I don't know if this point of the race was ever well marked or if they were starting to clean some stuff up, but April ended up going the wrong direction (for the second time) and lost about 5 minutes. But she ran those 4 miles looking really strong. She's awesome. At this point, this is when we realized our team was in LAST place!
These two are good friends!

Julie was going to have to run 7.2 miles next, but somewhere along the line, they'd changed the course and took a mile off of it and gave it to the person before. So Julie got to run 6.2 miles through some Santa Clara neighborhoods. She had a great pace (shocker) and wasn't that far behind the team just in front of us, but we didn't want to tell her that because we didn't want her to push herself any harder than she already was. Julie is one of my heroes. I hope I'm as "sporty at forty" as she is!

When Julie finished her last leg, Joanie was ready to tackle what would have been April's leg. She'd pulled out of the Lortab-Coma she was in and was able to run 3.8 miles before it started getting too hot. While she was running, I took advantage of having my best friend armed with a rolling pin near by, and had Emily roll out my hamstrings and butt muscles. It felt SOOO good, even if we were getting some REALLY funny looks from people (nonracers) driving by! Joanie was awesome and kept a steady pace throughout her 4 miles and did a great job! I was very impressed with how well she did, especially considering the amount of pain she had been in all night and dealing with the fog of the medication. What a gal!



This next part of the race was the hardest part for me. It was time for Emily's last leg and going into it, she had a great attitude. We'd rolled out her muscles, I'd made her eat a small bagel with as much cream cheese as I could pile onto that thing, she'd iced her knee and had purchased a knee brace at Wal-mart that morning... so things were going to be okay! Emily started off running, but unfortunately, within a minute, her knee went out on her and she couldn't run on it. We saw that she had a pretty steep hill to descend, and knowing her knee was hurting the most on the downhill, April jumped out and offered to run the .75 mile stretch of downhill for Emily. Emily accepted, but sadly, this was a bad thing that sent her spiraling into a deep, dark place. Emily is not a quitter. She's very competitive. She has high expectations for herself and often accomplishes amazing things. But that mid morning, running on the fumes of only 5 hours of sleep for the past 2 GRUELING DAYS, minimal quality nutrition, and in all kinds of pain from her knee, Emily did not have much to give and somehow needed to move herself 5.5 miles up and down a bunch of hills in the heat. She ended up walking the whole way (and not quickly like the night before) and wouldn't accept any food or water from us as she would catch up to us every mile or so. Watching this was VERY difficult for me. All of our teammates were just wanting to help her somehow, but there wasn't anything we could do. I could tell Emily was mad at herself and just needed to be left alone. I should have known to just drive to the end of her leg and let her get there when she'd get there, but she didn't have any water, and it was getting hot. Being exhausted myself, I wasn't able to keep my emotions stable in defending her. More than anything, I wanted to walk with her, and I would have if I hadn't still had my own 5.5 miles to accomplish once she was done. Eventually, Emily finished. It did take a long time, but ultimately, she finished the damn thing and did her part. I was proud of her. Hell, I AM still proud of her, even though she wasn't proud of herself. This look on her face is very telling. I love you, Em! Sorry this was a really dark couple of hours for you.


Finally, my moment of truth was up. I started at 11:10 am and the desert sun was right on top of me. This time, I told the van to stay within a mile of me which turned out to be a very good thing. I was surprised to find that once I got moving, my emotions steadied and my muscles were feeling pretty good. It didn't hurt to run, but my main problem was that I just couldn't move myself quickly through the heat. I felt like I had a huge leak in my gas tank. This leg of the race had a lot of hills, and even though I occasionally got to run down a little bit of one, it felt like it was a lot of climbing. I kept moving though, and would run for as long as I could and then walk for a minute here or there. It took my pace down to a 12:30-13:30 mile/min rate, but what can you do!? It was hot. I drank a TON of water and never felt it sloshing in my stomach. I also kept pooring the water on my head and down my neck, which helped a lot. But eventually, I just couldn't take it and eventually just had to take off my shirt. It wasn't like there were any other runners on the road and I was on my way to the thriving metropolis of Gunlock. Modesty be damned! Did I mention it was hot? Now, I know women run in sports bras all the time, but most of them don't have the darling, pasty white, stretch-marked "muffin top" I do! Sorry for the visual. The hydration belt DID help hide some of it! I was supposed to end with a half-mile run up a hill to the Gunlock dam, but the heavens (and race designers) smiled down on me and cut that part of the race. My van mates met me at the chute and we ran it in together. I ended up going 5.1 miles and it took me about 65 minutes.



This last 5 miles was agonizing, surprising, empowering, and humbling. I remember thinking, "this race is bigger than me, but it wasn't going to BEAT me." Going into it, I was nervous about not being ready, but I had some naive confidence telling me it wasn't that big of a deal. Well, it WAS bigger than me. 18 miles through the mountains on 2 hours of sleep is more than I can handle in a day's work. But, I was grateful that I was getting it done. With a little over a mile to go, I said to myself, "this is all you have left to do." I was slow, but I did it. It wasn't glorious, but it was mine. Yes, we were last, but we didn't quit. And I'm proud of that.

Once I was done, we had Tina drive us to the finish line. I needed to get out of that van. I didn't get a chance to stretch, I needed some food, and I wanted a chance to talk things out with Emily. When we got there, I was glad Julie was staying at the finish with us. Tina, April, & Joanie went back to give additional support to their sisters in the other van. Emily, Julie and I found a sliver of shade and laid out our blankets. The three of us were able to have a great talk together, reminding me why I love these ladies so much and why I'm glad we're friends. It's always so refreshing to be able to have such honest conversations with other women. While we were waiting there, we heard them announce the two teams ahead of us as they came across the line. Then we heard them ask, "Is there anyone from "So You Think You Can Run" here?" Julie went to talk to them (since Emily and I could barely walk!) to reassure them that we weren't TOO far from finishing. Had we been more than 2 hours out, they would have just called it quits for us, but we were only about 45-60 minutes away.


Tina, April and Joanie pulled up and we knew they were getting close. We gathered at the edge of the parking lot and when Ann and a few others turned the corner and ran toward us, a bunch of us got teary. This was obviously a difficult journey for all of us. We all ran in together, with Emily waiting for us near the finish since her knee was not about to let her run anymore that day. We crossed under that arch at around 4:30 pm, after 33 hours and 29 minutes of consecutive running; and we celebrated! Turns out we were only 10 WHOLE HOURS slower than the team that came in 1st place, and only 39 minutes behind the people who came in 2nd to last! As I mentioned in the last post, they offered each of us a free hat for coming in last. It wasn't like there were any other teams still hanging around to get jealous or anything! But at that point, I don't think anybody on our team even remotely cared that we came in last place... we were just glad to know that nobody gave up and we all accomplished this thing together.

After hanging out for just a little while, we got a ride into St. George to the hotel where everyone was staying. This is where things got a little dramatic again. During that 10 minute drive from the high school into town, I could hardly keep my eyes open. Emily felt the same way. When it came down to it, we were both scared to DEATH about the idea of driving home 4-5 hours that night. I knew I would be tired, (duh!) but I really had NO IDEA the level of sheer exhaustion I would be experiencing at that point. Em & I talked about sharing a room and then called our hubbies. Paul said he knew that this would happen and I totally lost it. I had ZERO control over the tears. Apparently when I'm really, really, really, really tired... I cry. I was happy that he understood and was ultimately supportive of me staying the night, but REALLY annoyed that he gave me all kinds of crap in the first place, and then didn't say anything when I told him about my change of plans on Wednesday night. He's done a relay like this before and he knew just how tired I might be. It would have been nice if he'd have backed off at that point and just encouraged me to plan ahead on staying. Emily's husband understood as well, but was struggling with his 3rd straight night of taking care of their tempermental toddler! They both wanted us home, but agreed that it would be bad if we DIED in the process of getting there! So they didn't make us feel any worse, but also didn't make us feel any better! Ugh... husbands! THEN, we also felt awful because Emily's brother, Jason, came down to St. George to pick us up (Em's car was in Cedar City) before we could call him and tell him not to come. We gave him some gas money and cried some more, which seemed to enlist some extra sympathy. Anyway... we booked the room, went upstairs (oooh, stairs... ouch!) and got cleaned up. Taking a shower definitely helped wash a bunch of the emotion away.

We all went to Cafe Rio for dinner, which was another thing that helped my wounded soul! Nothing like sweet pork salad to wash away the blues! Then we made it back to the hotel and no joke, I think we turned out the lights at 9:03 and I'm sure I was asleep by 9:04. Though I could stay up all night talking to Emily, we both agreed not to get offended that the other person had no desire to converse. We just needed sleep... and praise the heavens, we both got a lot of it.

We got up at 8:15, threw on some clothes so we could partake of a really yummy and free hot breakfast! We made it up to Cedar City, bought Jason a sandwich (we were still feeling guilty about wasting 2 hours of his time the night before), filled up the car, and headed home. We'd bought a People magazine and I read the whole thing to Emily as we drove north! Turns out, we're both secretly obsessed about the same celebrities! I'm so glad we were actually able to enjoy our drive home after getting enough rest and enough food that morning, rather than fighting the fatigue and the darkness the previous night. I really do think we would have died had we attempted it. Phew! It was great to get home and see Paul and my boys.

Am I glad I did it? Absolutely. Thank you, Tina, for being our team captain, organizing all of us, and being an awesome leader. It was so hard, but you said it would be. I'm so glad I did this race with you and your sisters and their friends. I don't regret this adventure AT ALL, and wouldn't dream of blaming you for dragging me into it! :)

So, would I do it again? Yes... under some different circumstances. I would love to do this race with Paul and a couple other guys... and some other really strong girls. That would mean I could take one of the spots more suited for less than fantastic runners maybe! Not that any of this race can really be considered suitable for beginners like me. But overall, it was an awesome and intense experience and it showed me a little of what I've got, and a LOT of what I don't got... YET! But even that is good information.



Now, if you've read this whole post, I think you're either insane or as obsessed about me as I am... which is impossible, so you must be insane! But I like to reward insanity, so if you leave a comment for me admitting you just wasted an hour or so of your life, I promise I will either bring you a candy bar or send you something in the mail. This post is RIDICULOUS!!!!