the colorado relay (last weekend)

waiting for our runner to come up and over for the exchange. 

 

check out the background--we had beautiful views!

 last weekend i spent friday and saturday cramped up in a car with 4 other folks (10 total for our team) slowly making our way to snowmass for the conclusion of the co relay.  i thought last year was fun....but this year was awesome.  i had SO much fun.  the whole event is pretty much unexplainable unless you are actually there....sleep deprived, tired, trying to sleep in some schoolyard's fb field, getting ready to run, running at 3:00 am or plastered in sweat from your last run and knowing you won't get a shower until you get home the next day.

it was SO much fun.

handing off the number at an exchange

i enjoyed the people in the van (i did last year too---but we laughed pretty much nonstop this year) and had some really challenging runs.  they were runs that i would have never made myself do unless i had 9 other people counting on me to finish!  i was runner #1 this year.  i have learned my lesson!  when looking at the running routes this year i was purely looking at mileage and how much climbing there was--not at the descriptions.  WHOOPS!  not being an uphill kind of gal, i ended up running up:

boreas pass in breckenridge

AND 

up vail pass!!!  

nothing says "we support you!" to a teammate like waiting for them to come in from their torrential downpour rain run at 2:00 am

you know what i'm talking about.  we started at the stoplight there by copper (across the highway from the super expensive starbucks) and took the bike trail up.  i had no idea i was supposed to run up the ENTIRE pass until right before (most likely because im an idiot and don't read all the running descriptions), which was a good thing because had i known, i probably would have fainted.  

done!  200 miles ran by our team.

my total mileage for the trip was 16, which looking at other runners from my team doing 30, 16 didn't look so bad!  (actually it looks pretty weenie-ish!)  i have nothing to complain about.  i felt great, had some good challenging runs and was still able to walk the next day!  i can only hope they ask me back next year.