Epic Relay!

About the same time last year that I signed up for Ragnar, I also signed up for another relay called Epic. It goes from Smithfield to Jackson Hole.

My legs of this one were supposed to be 6 miles, 5 miles and a little over 3 miles, but one of my friends asked me to trade her her last one that was a little over 7 miles and I did.

Anyway we were all excited for this race and had to be out to SkyView High School by 6:30 am on that Friday, August 8th. It's hard to get up that early when you don't get much sleep the night before!

Here we are at the starting line...

This race is so different from Ragnar, mostly because of how very many less people there are! As opposed to the 1500 teams that they register for Ragnar, Epic only had 80!

So in that way its really nice because there's not nonstop traffic etc...

Jon was our first runner...

Then I started in Richmond and ran to Lewiston Elementary...

It was actually kind of a hard 6 miles for me, I got a side ache after about a mile :/

And then I noticed my left knee starting to hurt towards the end of my run.

 It felt good to pass off to Ben!

Then he passed off to Jana... 

 Love this pic that I captured!

 And she passed off to Clarice..

Then Clarice passed off to Rhianna...another fun picture!

 Rhianna passed off to Van 2...

And we had our first break...

The parts between running were for sure the most fun :)

 Fun to have these guys in our van...we didn't know how that would be when we heard we'd have 2 guys, but they were great.

Beautiful scenery!

After those first legs of the race, we went and got changed at Ben's sister's house, then got lunch at Subway and made it to the next exchange where we hung out for a few hours and should have tried to sleep, but instead spent the whole time talking and laughing and taking pictures :)

While we were there, the sky started getting really dark and cloudy and by the time runner 12 from the other van ran in, it was raining hard!

But it was our turn to go again, so Jon got out and ran. Then when it was my turn it had kind of cleared out some so I put on my night gear and headed out...

 Within a few minutes of taking off I got hot and had to take all of my reflective stuff off to get my jacket off!

Anyway my knee hurt for the first little bit, but then it kind of loosened up and wasn't too bad and I felt so good! I felt like I could keep running forever. It even made me a little emotional at one point to just think of where I was, and what I was doing...something I never in a million years would have thought I could do.

 It was kind of crazy with lightning every second, but it was so fun.

 Right about when I hit mile 4 out of my 5, it started raining HARD! Huge raindrops...but I still felt so good. So I was disappointed to see first a cop drive by, then see our van coming back towards me and then they said I had to get back in. They were making everyone take a break to try to let it clear out.

So I made it to about 4.30 miles. Oh well...

But even though we were supposed to take a break...Ben got out when we got to his exchange and he did his 8 miles. It cleared out a lot then...

But he was about the only one to run that leg...everyone else drove to the next exchange.

Anyway...then Jana and Clarice ended up doing 3 miles together so we could try to catch up and Rhianna did 3 of her 6 I think & we finally got to the final exchange where we could sleep.

The boys slept outside on the ground, Jana and Clarice slept in a tent and Rhi and I slept I her car. (If you could call it sleep :)

At that point my knee was killing me and I couldn't stretch out at all.

So by the morning I was really limping.

But after Jon ran, I did my last 7 miles in pain the whole time. I would run a little bit, then walk, then try to stretch it out. It was really disappointing because it would have been a really fun run. It was beautiful.

Oh well...I was determined to finish it and I did.

 Then everyone else finished their last legs and we headed into Jackson to wait for van 2 and do the finish line.

We walked around for a bit then went and ate some good food, then relaxed for awhile...

Then finally ran across the finish line...so much fun, especially since I didn't get to do it at Ragnar!

 Our whole team...

 ...and our cool medal!

Even with my hurt knee, I loved Epic!

 Jana, Clarice and I drove Rhianna's car home alone because her husband and girls came to stay with her in Jackson and the guys' wives came to meet them too.

The drive flew by as we chatted forever. We thought we'd get tired, but didn't!
I sure was that night though, and my poor knee was killing me... 

So I'm being forced to take a little time off running and trying to do some stretches that will hopefully help.

The next day, Jana and I cleaned out and washed Rhi's car...It was so dirty and took like 2 hours! But I really didn't want her to have to come home to a dirty car, then have to go back to work on Monday.

Anyway, such a fun weekend that I'm glad I got to be part of so many laughs, and just such a good time with a fun team!