RedRock Relay...Finally!

Wow, I'm really late getting this on here, but better late than never, right?

About a month ago me and 11 other CRAZY friends got to go run the RedRock Relay. It's a relay race that started on a Friday morning at BrianHead and ended Saturday afternoon, after running all night, around Snow Canyon. Yup, about 180 miles of totally unexpected running conditions! If we would have known what we were in for I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have done it, but to look back on it I'm glad we did and I think all of us would do it again. I don't think we had any idea how steep the hills were going to be, how much it was going to rain, how hot it would end up being, and how much sleep we wouldn't be getting.

We started the weekend off by heading down to the cabin Thursday afternoon. We were lucky enough to have somewhere close (and free!) to stay that night, only about 20 minutes from the start of the race. We had lots of fun that night getting our costumes and vans ready for the big day. There were prizes given away for best vans and costumes, so we went for it (we didn't win but we should have!) Our team name was Justice League which is a cartoon with a bunch of Super Heroes, some well known and some not so much. For example, everyone knows who Batman and Superman are, I doubt many know who Martian Manhunter or Zatanna are! I think I made a pretty good Martian Manhunter if you ask me:)

Here we are getting ready Friday morning, we looked dang good! I think Martian Manhunter gave Batman a pretty good hairdo! Not all of our team stayed at the cabin with us, but here's most of us before we left for the race. I thought this was a good one, Melanie was Aquaman and in good form in this picture!

And here's all of us at the starting line. I was nervous and excited to get started, the atmosphere of the whole thing was pretty fun! And seriously, how good do we look! The most annoying part of the whole weekend was that we get there and find out there is another team dressing up like the Justice League characters...and their team name had nothing to do with Super Heroes! We're pretending like they didn't beat us in the costume contest!:(

My Mom and Dana were kind enough to be our van drivers and haul us around everywhere. Dana brought some pretty sweet costumes for them too! We were glad they were there not only to haul us around but to cheer us on!

Here's a few of us after our first runner, Lance aka Green Arrow, had taken off. Lance was quite a sport, the only guy running with 10 women. I'm sure he thought we were all nuts. There's Superman (Deb), Flash (Michelle), Martian Manhunter, Spiderman (Shaylee), Zatanna (Tiffany), and Batman (Shannon). We must really like to show off our guns cuz we were flexing in a lot of our pictures! I was the 11th runner, so I didn't run until later Friday afternoon. When my turn finally came around I was so excited to get started. My first leg was around 7 miles, on "rolling hills" as the description said. Their definition of "rolling hills" was our definition of steep mountains. It was sprinkling a tiny bit for maybe the first couple of miles and a downpour from then on out. There was rain and sometimes hail, and I had at least an inch of mud on the bottom of my shoes. I know, boohoo, but it was just sooo not what I was expecting. However I do think running in the rain beats running in the Snow Canyon sun!

My second leg started around 4 a.m. and was again in the rain. There was one pretty crappy hill to run up, but other than that it was my favorite leg. Who knew you wouldn't mind running 6 miles in the rain with no sleep!

This is our van crew right before we started our last leg. We had ran through the night in lightning and rain and had pretty much zero sleep, not to mention we stunk really bad. We were anxious to get going so we could be done!

This is Tiff passing off to me for my last leg! I thought this one would be no problem, but I was wrong...again. It was an afternoon in St. George which meant it was in the 90's, I was worried about our team getting dehydrated it was so hot. It was only like 4 miles and was a lot downhill, but I think I got a little too anxious and was going too fast cuz I wanted to throw-up and die! Throughout the race we had been passing other teams, and then they would pass us later on...yada yada yada. Anyways, there was a girl behind me and I just couldn't let her pass me. I don't know for sure why we cared so much, but our team was bound and determined to beat them! She never passed me but she came pretty close! If I would have just swallowed my pride I probably wouldn't have inflicted so much pain upon myself!

Here we are at the finish line! Hooray! We finished in just over 30 hours. After each person finished a leg, they got a mark on their calf. So this is us showing them off! We were pretty proud!

(Shannon, Lance, Melanie, Jen, Me, Deb, Carly, Erin, Tiffany, Deb, Michelle, and Amber)

As crazy as the whole thing was, I think most of us felt like it was one of the most rewarding experiences. We totally felt like we had accomplished something that we weren't sure we were going to be able to do! And what sounds even crazier is that I'm looking forward to the next time we get to do it! Thanks to all of our great team members and friends and our van drivers, getting to know everyone better made it fun. And thanks to Kurtis for taking care of things at home while I was out dressing up like a moron and running around Southern Utah!