First Light Relay

How many ways can a person describe awesome? I wish I knew because it would make for a much more exciting blog post.

A few months ago, the girls in my running group decided to enter a relay with the intention of breaking the course record for the women's relay division. This one idea domino-ed many other crazy-fun activities revolving this relay adventure. To make our south Alabama relay complete, I enlisted Adrienne, leading to our nickname "TexBama."

Adrienne arrived Friday night, and we were already busy bedazzling our shirts with skulls and crossbones. Saturday was a packed day with a group run, visit the beach, and dinner with the entire Spiridon Team. (The club also had a co-ed team.)

Sunday morning came early, and we were rearing to go with tattoos and funny posters. TP drove our relay vehicle= his huge red pickup truck, perfect for our TexBama theme. Even though the temperature and humidity seemed to rise by the minute, our spirits and confidence for the course record (and a Sub 3 time goal) never wavered.

It's quite true that relays are terrible situations for fast racing or PRs. For example, I was in what I like to call "complete spaz mode" that morning. All the screaming, yelling, and running around crazy left little attention for my own warmup or the usual pre-race routines.

My own leg of the relay stank beyond belief. It was super humid, super hot, and SUPER hilly. Not to mention I had been acting like a silly goose for nearly 3 hours already that morning, leaving very little energy for any type of racing. I had to run up the dreaded "Fireman's Hill" and my pace slowed to 7:30- wowzers! I was able to at least hit half marathon pace to make it into some sort of workout.

Really, though, the amount of FUN and the relationships that were strengthened this weekend will far outlast any memory of a sucky race time.


*Apparently I left his blog post hanging. Instead of trying to re-live this memory of 2 weeks ago, I'm going to abort now and start on my Houston RR. :) Stay tuned....