Red Rock Relay Moab 2012

This last weekend was finally the Red Rock Relay in Moab, Ut. This was something that I had been looking forward to since October.  Our team name was Sole Sisters and was made up of 6 girls.  Me, Taliah, my cousins Heather & Cheryl, Sarita (Heather's friend) & Jentrie (Cheryl's friend).  Everyone had been on their own as far as training, but we had been in close contact for all the important details like team shirts, & food, lodging etc.

Me, Cheryl, Heather, Taliah, Sarita, Jentrie

Saturday morning we met up at the park so we could send Cheryl off as our 1st runner. Her leg began at 8:35.

After we sent Cheryl off, we went up a head to be prepared for when she needed water & to get our next runners in place.

Our 2nd leg was ran by Sarita, 3rd by Taliah & finally the 4th leg was all mine!  The very beginning of my leg was an immediate up hill.  It really was a lot more difficult than I had expected.  I thought that I had trained ok on hills, but it was apparent that I need to do more hill training...at a longer distance.  About 1/2 way up the hill I got a major side ache.  It was so bad that I couldn't really get a good breath. I had to slow down to a walk and try to breathe through the pain to hopefully get it to go away.  Finally, after about 1/2 of my water bottle it subsided and I was able to continue my leg of the race.  The remaining part of my leg was a gradual uphill.  Very hot and very intense.  It was awesome though.  Even though I stayed at a pretty steady pace (not super fast), I was still passed by some of those "elite" runners. As they would pass, they would offer encouraging words.  Those helped a ton. It really made you want to continue moving forward.

I finally made it to the exchange & passed the "baton" on to Heather!  My pace ended up being about 11:25 mm. Definitely not great, but given the heat, & incline I felt ok about it.

We continued up through the La Sal Mountains.  At one of our places that we had pulled off, I snapped this picture.  We had ran down that road earlier!! It was so pretty. The views were just amazing.  It was nice to be able to enjoy those views as we waited for our runners.

Feelin' like I'm on top of the world!

Heather passed the baton onto Jentrie, then onto Cheryl again, onto Sarita, back to Jentrie then back to me for my 2nd leg!

This hill (right below the tree line-rocky area) was the beginning of my 2nd leg. Yeah, I lucked out having to start out on a hill again!  It wasn't too bad though.  By this time the temperature had cooled down a bit, plus there was a breeze being that high in the mountains.  After that incline, the rest of the leg was all down hill. It dropped 2000 ft in 7.5 miles.  Once I got into a groove, I was able to cruise along.  I have never ran so hard and so fast in my entire life.  I was able to finish that leg in about an hour.  I ended up running at about an 8:30 mm!! It was awesome. It passed so quick, I was quite surprised! 

I passed the baton onto Taliah!  I was so proud of Taliah.  She found out a few days before the relay, that her foot that had been giving her trouble was because of a slight fracture.  Even though she was hurting, she gave it her all and did quite well! That my friends is dedication!!

She passed the baton back to Heather for the final leg of the relay.  Heather made it to the finish line at the park and we all ran across as a team!

We finished the relay at 9:30pm and collected our finisher medals!

It was a very long, hot, exhausting, amazing, exciting, & addicting day!  Even though my team didn't win any awards, we didn't finish in record time, we still had a great time and we finished after 70 miles of road through the mountains and valleys of Moab. I call that a successful day.

I'm already to do it again next year!  I don't know about everyone else, but I'm ready!!

Monday May 14th, I received an email telling me that I had made the lottery draw into the St George Marathon this October!!  I'm super excited to begin training for this.  Taliah didn't make the lottery draw which is a huge bummer, but she is going to run the Mesquite Marathon in November.  We will still be able to train together (from afar...hehe) and keep each other motivated!  I can't wait.