Red Rock Relay

I'm on a roll! This is blog post number two and it's only been like 2 weeks!  So Friday and Saturday the 9th and 10th I ran in the Red Rock Relay in Southern Utah.  For those of you who don't know what the Red Rock Relay is it's basically the same as Ragnar and if you don't know what that is I will tell you briefly.  It's a relay race over the course of 185 miles in Southern Utah, starting at Brian Head and weaving its way around down to end in Zions Park. Teams are made up of 2 vans with 6 people in each van and each person runs 3 legs during the course which takes a little over 24 hours to complete.

The race was a blast! The only down side was having to leave a wonderful wife and my beautiful newborn back at home :( I wish they could have come with me. Oh and I guess the other downside is running all those miles all day and night! :) There were multiple times when my knees felt like they were going to explode that I would ask myself, "why am I paying to do this!!" but really I loved it, it's just a major mental mind game when your out there running.

I had a fantastic team that was made up of a girl I work with, Kami, a few of her friends, and one of my friends.  We still haven't received the results back to see how we did but we are anxiously awaiting (although I don't know why cause we definitely didn't win anything :) ) 

Just thought this showed the Red Rock in the background pretty good.

This is me in the chute getting ready to run by popping my headphones in! 

This is our amazing limo van! It doesn't look special on the outside but the inside has leather wrap around seating, sweat colored lights, a TV, and even a place chill our champagne that we don't drink :)

No comment, I should probably just remove this picture really.

We started to get creative in our methods of encouraging each other on. This is Mike dancing on the van cheering on Lyndie!

This hill was literally as steep as it looks! Only 1 mile in my 5 mile leg and I was probably only still running because I'm sooo competitive and had to pass that girl in front of me... And I did :)

This is my friend prepping for his night run at around midnight! We ran  until about 3 a.m. then got 1.5 hours of sleep before we were back pounding the pavement! Great times, makes you question why you pay money for things like this :)

Luckily we had a house to sleep in.  But this is a church at one of the exchanges with probably a minimum of 300 people spread all over trying to get some rest in their sleeping bags.

These are Nate's shoes at sunrise! We could literally see him coming from 1/2 a mile away!

This is the beginning of my final leg, I really had no idea whether or not I would be crawling to the finish line :) During this leg I'm pretty sure I tried to jump on the side of my van for a ride, asked another van for a ride, and asked a lady riding a horse for a ride :) All 3 attempts at cheating failed. 

This is our whole team crossing the finish line! Both Van #1 and #2

This is all my runnin mates from Van 2! They are pure champs!