Good cause, good people, laughs, delirium, cops, Cujo, trains, stars, robbery, all in a night to remember. I said I would never do a relay no matter how much my friend coaxed me. On Friday at work I received a text from her "Call me now!" I thought something was wrong so of course I called. "We gotta do this relay!" of course I said no but then she explained what it was for:The Cause:
The Ulman Cancer Fund
The People:
Revolution3 Triathlon
They are doing a Run Across America to raise money for the Ulman Cancer Fund and there is still time to donate! They have two teams that leap frog taking 8 hour shifts and they take turns running. They contacted our running club because they need an 8 hour shift covered while passing through NM so they could nurse some injuries and get some well deserved rest so my friend decided to come to the rescue last minute and put together a team to take it on! It was such a great experience and even though we only met them briefly I could feel the energy that each of them put out! Some of us on our team had never met other than through DM or FB but we all had fun.
Cops/Robbery - We were in the middle of no where between midnight and 8am with our hazards on going really slow following runners with a head lamp/vest and blinking red lights, so we got pulled over at least 5-6 times. A couple of times the cops asked our runner if we had seen a guy in jeans walking and we had actually noticed 2 guys dressed in black walking together on this desolate road and thought it was odd but then we figured they thought the same about us. The cops told us they had just robbed a store and took off with lights on. Another one just wanted to make sure we were ok and once we explained he just waived us on.
Cujo - There was one small town that we ran through that was very scary mainly because each house had at least 6 vicious dogs protecting it and Cujo was on the lose while one of us was running, luckily he just sniffed our runner a little and took off but he was HUGE and scary and when it was my turn to run my heart was racing so fast and I've never been afraid of dogs. Once I looked over to see one racing towards me with gnarly teeth but then it came to the end of it's chain!!!!
Trains/Pooping in the desert - Another one of us was apparently scared to death of trains, we couldn't stop laughing (sorry) I mean seriously who's scared of trains :-) I appreciated when the trains came by because I figured the loud noise was scaring away critters that might have been lurking in the dark waiting for us to pass by. She did get over her fear of pooping in the open though on this trip we were all so proud she's officially an endurance runner now!!
 |
| Can you guessed who organized this for us? Maybe the one that looks way too excited to be running a relay at midnight? |
After all that we made it back safe and it was an awesome experience. Although it confirmed that I am grumpy when I don't get sleep and not a very good night runner I did manage to get 9 of our team of 5's 48 miles in and even though I wouldn't want to do a relay that was actually a race I loved the experience and my running friends and all for a good cause! I then came home and went for a 2 mile hike/walk with a friend who it was her 1st time exercising and I'm so proud of her! She did awesome and has a plan to get healthy! Another runner rushed home because he still had to go pace his wife on her 1st 10k race ever and she did awesome!
It was a good weekend folks!!! How about you would you rather do a 36 hour running relay or an Ironman? IM for me thanks!
P.S. Don't forget to enter my Road ID giveaway HERE!!! ends April 6th
