Race Report: 2009 Wasatch Back Relay

Alternate Titles:

Who Needs Toenails Anyway?

or

Is This Your Sweaty Sports Bra or Mine?
___________________________________________

Every now and again in life, if you're lucky, you find yourself part of something special. Maybe it's something you've planned for and anticipated for a long time or maybe it's something that's sprung upon you unexpectedly. Regardless, when it happens, you know it. And if you're wise, you pause long enough to acknowledge and embrace the impact it has made.

Last weekend, I found myself part of something special. Don't worry... I'm not about to go all Mary Poppins on you. I still enjoy turning a garden hose on a stray cat just as much as the next person. But because I like to consider myself somewhat wise, I'm taking this moment to pause long enough to acknowledge and embrace. Then, when I'm done, I'll make it a point to honk numerous times at slow, geriatric drivers just to make sure no permanent damage was done.

I find it very intriguing how running can be such a personal, individualized sport but also a celebration of a community effort. 95% of my running is done alone-- just me and the floating matter between my ears-- and it's easy to feel like I'm the only one out there slogging through the miles day after day. It never fails to fascinate me at races to realize not only am I not the only one out there, but there are thousands upon thousands of people who do what I do for the same reasons I do it. Running can be the most lonely sport in the world one day and the most crowded one the next.

My Wasatch Back experience was the perfect example of this dichotomy. The event boasted more than 650 teams and 9,000 runners, which by any definition would be considered a crowd. But as a 24-hour relay race, there were often times we were running completely alone-- sometimes in the middle of the night in the dark-- only to round the corner or climb the hill and be greeted again by a crowd of enthusiastic, cheering runners. Never before have I felt more strongly the distinct spirit of camaraderie that exists between runners than during this race.

I was one runner of an all-women team of 12. We came from different locations and backgrounds but we all had at least one thing in common: a love of running. Going into the race, I didn't know a single one of them and to say that was a little bit daunting would be an understatement. I soon learned my apprehension was totally unfounded, however, as one by one, I met the women whom would comprise my team and one by one, I connected with them. Over the course of the next 30 hours and two minutes, we shared our living quarters on wheels and took turns running, eating, sleeping, driving... and bleeding, sweating, crying and puking. We each had some of the most physically and mentally challenging runs we've ever accomplished due to stifling heat, driving rain, rough terrain, towering inclines and plunging downhills. And we did it all on two hours of "sleep" on the floor of a muggy high school auditorium, surrounded by hundreds of other equally exhausted, foul-smelling runners.

An adventure? You better believe it.

Of course, there was plenty of light banter and laughter along the way (Shorty McHotPants, anyone?). We once made stopping to use the bathroom a religious event. We dined on fine cuisine such as turkey sandwiches, string cheese, gogurts and homemade cookies and declared Diet Coke to be the cure-all to everything evil. We learned the Spanish words for road kill we encountered along the way and unanimously decided communal showers in the girls locker rooms are as bad now as they were back in high school.

Fortunately, we never suffered from injury or illness as did some other teams, but it was truly one of the most challenging things I've ever done in my life. My specific legs were difficult and severely tested at times my professed love for the sport of running. But there was something inspiring about watching my teammates-- normal, everday runners like myself-- conquer their own challenges in their own ways. I saw will and determination in each of their faces that motivated me to keep going, especially when I would have loved nothing more than to quit. The teamwork, the camaraderie, the combined dedication to something we loved-- it was thirty hours and two minutes of character defining moments I'll not soon forget.

I went into the Wasatch Back feeling like a lonely runner. Along with the company of 11 of the most amazing women I'll ever meet, I came out of it feeling part of something remarkably special.

Now quick... I gotta turn on the hose and find a stray cat.

A few photos from our weekend adventure:

Team Energizer Runnies (hence, the bunny ears) at the start line before the all the fun (and misery) kicked in.

My first leg at 5:15 p.m.: a hot and dusty steep descent for 6.9 miles on treacherous rocky terrain. I hurdled ruts and ravines, boulders, tree limbs and one severed animal leg. Thanks to this run, I'll be the proud owner of two less toenails in the coming months.

My second leg at 1:30 a.m.: A continuous uphill climb for 8.1 miles in the dark. The adrenaline I was riding on abruptly ran out around mile 5 and what was a rather enjoyable, pleasant run under the stars turned into a grueling uphill death march. The road kept climbing, offering very little reprieve and although it felt sickeningly similar to the last 10K of a marathon, I never allowed myself to stop to walk. When I finally reached the top of the last hill and handed my baton off to my teammate, I leaned over to put my hands on my knees to sob for a few seconds. Probably the single toughest run I've ever done in my life.

Flexing the guns after my midnight run. At that point, I felt like I could conquer the world.

Sprinting to the finish of my third and final leg: a flat 3.1 miles at 12:30 p.m. through a quiet residental area in the wind and rain. I was running on dead legs, no doubt the slowest 5K I've ever done, but when I heard the crowd cheer and saw my team in their bunny ears, the adrenaline kicked in one last time.

Team Energizer Runners at the finish line behaving a little strangely... but can you blame us after what we'd done? We ended up placing 27th out of 81 women's teams. Not too shabby. Not too shabby at all.

Yakking It Up

Living in rural farmland country, I don't need a running buddy because I already have dozens of them. Of course, they're not the human kind and I guess technically, they're not the running kind either. But on any given run, I get to cross paths with all kinds of company: cows, horses, goats, chickens and even the occasional llama. But a couple of weeks ago, I encountered something new--a yak.

I had to look twice. Seriously... a yak? Don't yaks live in arctic cold climates like Tibet? Oh wait... this is Idaho. Nevermind.

As yaks go, he was a friendly fellow. Admittedly, I can't say I've ever met another yak with which to compare, but he seemed a fairly typical yak. He watched me approach; we made eye contact. I nodded to acknowledge him and out of courtesy struck up a little conversation.

"Haven't seen you around these parts before".

He didn't reply, which I might have taken for being a bit rude, but in his defense, he did stop chewing whatever was in his mouth. Our encounter was over in a matter of seconds, but I like to think the yak and I formed a little insta-bond in that moment of time when our existences intersected.

I finished my run and didn't think about the yak again until later that night. It was my daughter's ninth birthday and we gave her the choice of where she wanted to go out to dinner. She chose a hole-in-the-wall burger joint a few miles past Grandpa's old farm that serves one-pound hamburgers on gigantic buns with all the fixings. You didn't read that wrong... one pound burgers, as in one patty that weighs one pound. Despite how it sounds, they're delicious and the place is always hopping. They even have a wall with photos of people who have managed to eat the entire one-pound burger by themselves. No, I'm not pictured on that wall. 3/4 is as far as I've ever gotten.

We stepped into the diner and were waiting to be seated when I looked up and noticed a chalkboard sign above the cash register:

"Now serving yak burgers!"

All the sudden I felt a little sick to my stomach. Not at the thought of eating a yak burger, but at the revelation of the fate of my new BFF. Out of respect, I offered a moment of silence. But then I promptly proceeded to down my share of the one-pound hamburger when it was put in front of me. (Don't judge me. I don't personally know any of the local cows.)

Again, I didn't think about the yak until this morning's run when my route took me through his pasture. There he was again-- or one that looked eerily just like him. I can't be sure, but I don't think it was the same yak. This one didn't stop to look at me, much less stop chewing... and to be honest, I couldn't look it in the eyes anyway. Instead, I nervously averted mine and focused straight ahead towards mile six without looking back. But as I did, my stomach rumbled a little from hunger and I couldn't help but wonder...

Do yaks go better with french fries or tater tots?

Tall Girl's Excellent Adventure

Typically, by this time of year, I've already run the first one or two races of the season. This year, however, I've purposefully taken a different approach. Instead of throttling out of the starting gate at the first of the year to run every race within reaching distance, I've been patiently and diligently training while biding my time. Watching... waiting... like a sleek and graceful cheetah in an African savanna desert, crouching beneath the brush, intently studying the antelope as they graze, waiting for just the right moment to POUNCE.

My meticulous patience is soon to be rewarded; my moment to POUNCE is soon to arrive. In a little over a month, I'll be running my first race of the 2009 season. This race, however, will be unlike any other I've done before because this is the year I'll be running the Wasatch Back Relay.

The Wasatch Back is one of those monster 24-hour relays that divides 178 miles between 12 runners. It runs along the back of the Wasatch mountain range in northern Utah, covering terrain from serene flat farmlands to rolling gravel hills to treacherous mountain trails. As a 24-hour race, runners are competing at all hours, whether during the scorching heat of the day or chilly blackness of the night. Physically, it's not for the weak or faint of heart.

This is going to be an adventure for me in more ways than one. To begin with, I'm running this relay with 11 virtual strangers, all women and mothers like myself. We formed our team online about a year ago and while I've gotten to know them a little via a blog created specifically for this race, I've never met a single one of them in person. For someone as socially-challenged as I tend to be, this is somewhat intimidating. What if they don't like me? What if they think I look funny or talk funny... or worse... run funny? In a way, I feel like I'm about to go back 20 years ago in time to high school when every day of my life was spent in self-conscious agony amongst my peers. I'm going to be spending at least 24 hours with these women in very close confines at times... eating, sleeping, changing clothes, smelling bad. The only other person I've done that with is my husband and.... well... the fun of that honeymoon ended a long time ago.

This will also be the first time I've ever run late at night. My second leg (there's three of them for each runner) is predicted to start around 1:50 in the morning. There just ain't been too many times in the last 20 years that I've seen that hour of the morning. And if I have, it's been to feed a newborn baby or sit with a sick child while she retchingly hovers over the toilet. 95% of my life at 1:50 a.m. has been spent meticulously studying the insides of my eyelids and dreaming of happy places. But next month, I'm going to be expected to not only be wide awake at 1:50 in the morning, but also run 8.1 miles up a mountain. That is so not a happy place.

Along with the late hour comes the dark. A whole lot of dark. In general, I'm not a big fan of dark. In high school, I would always make my best friend walk me home around the block so I didn't have to do it alone in the dark (of course, that meant she had to walk back home by herself in the dark, but at that point it wasn't my problem anymore). We runners will be wearing reflective vests, flashing LED lights and headlamps and will have other runners and support vehicles nearby, but that doesn't negate the fact we're RUNNING. IN. THE. DARK. And I'm just a little more than concerned that because my middle-of-the-night leg happens to be across mountain terrain, I'm going to encounter some kind of furry animal. Along with dark, I'm also not a fan of furry animals. I don't do cats or dogs and I definitely don't do skunks, coyotes or mountain lions.

So, this is what awaits me a little more than a month from now. I'm anxious, I'm nervous, I'm scared and I'm excited. And I have the feeling I'm in for the adventure of a lifetime.

I just hope I don't trip up on a woodchuck in the middle of the night. And if I do, I hope my teammates don't see it.

Hitting the Mathematical Wall

What is it about long-distance running that affects one's (okay... MY) ability to calculate simple math problems?

This has happened more times than I care to admit, but most recently during my long run yesterday morning. Though I was aiming to hit a total of 14 miles for the day, I wanted to make it a point to note my time at the half-marathon mark (13.1 miles) because I was pretty sure I was on a personal best pace for that distance. When I hit mile 9, I knew I was exactly six miles away from home.

That's where things started getting fuzzy.

Now, I have a copious amount of training when it comes to calculating math problems, including but not limited to: balancing my checkbook enough to know I probably shouldn't have written that last check, figuring the discount on a sale item at the store in anticipation of learning I can't afford to NOT buy it, deducting the amount of tip my waitress will receive every time she forgets to refill my drink, multiplying how many servings of miniature candy bars are in a bag to make sure there's enough to supply the appropriate sugar high for my daughter's school class for her birthday, adding up how much money we don't have for retirement, giving the cashier the right amount of money to ensure I get back the least amount of pocket change, computing my next paycheck to make sure I'm not getting shorted (again), multiplying how many cups of flour would go in a cookie recipe if I'm doubling it, etc. and so on. The list is endless, really. It should be obvious by now I'm a veritable mathematic genius.

Why then, at mile 9, could I not wrap my head around the fact 9+3=12 and not 13?

I don't seem to have trouble with any other intellectual endeavors during long runs. I never end my sentences with prepositions; I wouldn't dare mix acid with cyanide salt; I don't embarrass myself in the company of French-speaking dignitaries by asking to ride a poulet instead of a cheval; I wouldn't be caught dead confusing the Spanish-American War with the Mexican-American War and I sure as hell don't use "there", "their" or "they're" incorrectly.

But add 9+3? Apparently, that stumps me.

I did eventually figure out that 9+3 does not equal 13 and never will, but only when I actually looked at the numbers on my GPS screen and realized I still had more than a mile to run.

I've learned my lesson, however. In the future, I've pledged to consciously prohibit myself from doing any kind of math whatsoever while on the run.

No more calculating how many spoonfuls of Moose-Tracks ice cream I can eat after my run without feeling guilty. No more contemplating how many children we should have before we can't feed them anymore. No more adding up how many miles are between God-forsaken Idaho and the white sandy beaches of Montego Bay. No more dividing my late-grandmother's inheritance to determine if my share will cover the cost of a new big screen LCD TV with a surround-sound stereo system in the finished basement.

And definitely no more adding up how many miles I have left to run.

Better just to be left in painful mathematical ignorance.

Change of Scenery

Things have been a little hectic in my corner of the world the last few weeks. A full ten years after buying our house, I finally convinced (read: threatened) my husband to finish our basement. He's a contractor by trade, so you'd think that'd be a project that would have been completed years ago, wouldn't you? Apparently, however, he and the proverbial plumber with the leaky faucets are good pals. Nevertheless, even as I type, I can hear the sounds of hammering, drilling, nailing, spraying, pounding, scraping, and all-around general banging down below me. I've pretty much had a headache for three weeks.

Somehow, I've managed to retain my sanity, thanks mostly to keeping up a regimented schedule of running to help blow off the stress. There doesn't exist a jackhammer that can rattle me, not when I had a fantastic tempo run the night before! The only downside is that I've been relegated to doing my treadmill runs in the garage where all the furnishings of the previously unfinished basement have been temporarily moved. One day, I ran eight miles while facing the artificial Christmas tree; another day, I ran alongside the lawnmower and weed whacker. And yet another day, when the temperature outside had topped 70 degrees, I ran with the garage doors open while neighbors drove by every few minutes.

You'd think my own neighbors would be above honks and catcalls, wouldn't you?

Fortunately, the end is increasingly within sight and before long, I'll have my very own room in the basement to run on the treadmill, complete with walls, carpet and maybe even a sound system.

Not to mention a little privacy from the creepy old guy with binoculars across the street.

Verily, Verily, the Birds Shall Tweet Again

I'm no scriptorian, but if I were ever to write a running Bible, that would be the title of one of the chapters. The chapter that covers why a runner who lives in a miserably arctic climate such as-- oh, I dunno, let's say Idaho-- should do all he or she can to endure through it because there is indeed a light at the end of the tunnel.

Today, I saw that light. And like a sleepwalking child who smells sugar, I went toward it.

The temperature this morning as I set out for my mid-week tempo run was 35 degrees. That's at the beginning of the run! It could well have skyrocketed to 40 degrees by the time I was done. All I know is the sun was shining, the air was balmy and the birds were tweeting. It made me want to stop and tweet with them but I wasn't sure that was entirely appropriate. So, I repressed the urge to tweet and just ran and inhaled the scent of the imminent spring after another long, arduous winter. Other than the aroma of sautéing mushrooms and onions on Thanksgiving morning, nothing has ever smelled sweeter.

For the last 3 1/2 months, I've been cutting back my mileage. It was a forced decision in some ways as I had a shin injury that simply refused to heal. But I also did it in an effort to make time for more cross-training in my routine. After seven years, my body just didn't recognize running as real exercise anymore. As much good as running was doing, I might as well have been lying on the couch watching reruns of Fresh Prince of Bel Air, eyes glazed over and a stream of drool connecting my face to the leather. Okay... maybe that's not a fair statement. As opposed to running, at least I was burning a few calories on the couch by blinking once in awhile. And chortling. That Will Smith is a trip.

The elusive point to all this is my body had officially informed me the gig was up. I could run across the country and back and while I might burn a few calories doing it, I wasn't going to lose any holiday poundage, much less gain a sleeker physique. To do that, I had to bring some new game. And so I did-- and a new approach to my training was born. Five days a week of running turned to a mere three days, but mixed in with three other days of cross-training via one method or another. Inadvertently, I had become a master of the F.I.R.S.T program, endorsed by Runner's World, which promises eventual gains in speed on only three days a week of running.

It's working, folks. I'm feeling lean and mean these days, not to mention fast... just in time for the spring and summer racing season. I've got some PR's that are so buttered toast this year.

Just in time to feed all those tweeting birds.

Help Out a Mother

If you're a regular reader of Runner's World, the names Dimity McDowell Davis and Sarah Bowen Shea might ring a bell. They collaborated recently on a terrific article about running the Nike Women's San Francisico marathon together and they wrote a blog on the Runner's World website catered towards mothers who run. Now, they're working together again on a book tentatively titled Run Like a Mother, which will focus on the "intersection of mothering and running". For their research, they've put out a survey for running mothers and have asked all who would be willing to fill it out and send it in. They'll be using the feedback they receive in their book, scheduled to be released in the spring of 2010.

As a running mother myself of two daughters, I think this is a very intriguing project they're understaking and have sent in my own feedback. If you haven't come across their survey already and are interested in letting your own voice be heard, leave a comment and I'll send you the document via e-mail.

Now, go wash your hands and eat your vegetables.

Edited to add: If you'd like to take the survey, either leave your email address in the comments or send me a note at tallgirlrunning@gmail.com and I'll get it to you!