Our team was named Psychic Sweetpants. Yep, that’s right. Psychic Sweetpants! The name was based on a couple funny incidents of misread words (namely physics and sweatpants). The team was a coed team consisting of our friends Tanya, Monica, Sumer, Cori, Mary, and Chad (yes, Chad was the co-ed part of the team). Each member of the team ran two different legs averaging a total 10 to 12 miles per person for the day. Our friend Sharene was the van driver for the runners for the entire day, and I was a volunteer at one of the relay stations. Each team had to provide a volunteer in order to participate. Basically, I spent 4 hours flagging vans and SUVs into parking spots while protecting people from being run over (kind of like at my job only with cars instead of airplanes).
Friday night (the 13th I might add), the day before the race, Monica, Tanya, Chad and I drove to Stanley where we camped for the night in Monica and Tanya’s Westfalia van named ‘Thelma’. We only got a couple hours sleep before waking up at 1:30am. We quickly ate breakfast and were on our way to meet the rest of the team at their hotel. Since I did not have to start volunteering until 8am, I took over the comfy hotel room (lucky me!), getting a few extra hours of sleep while the rest of the team headed to start the race. Their start time was 3:45 am!!!
Sawtooth Mountains in Stanley
Tanya, Monica and Chad teeter-tottering the night before the race!
Overall the race went very well. The weather was perfect (warm and sunny)! Everyone ran according to their projected times and the team as a whole came in about 10 minutes earlier than expected. They ran for almost 10 hours! It sounds like they had a great time during the day. A few mishaps along the way, but all laughable. Thankfully, after my volunteering I was able to beat the team to the finish line by a mere 5 minutes and got to take pictures as they crossed the finish. After the race, they provided food, drinks, and music for the participants and their volunteers. We also got free shirts as proof of the accomplishment. (My shirt of course says ‘volunteer’, so there’s no false bragging on my part)
Look, Chad's running so fast he's blurry!
The view from part-way up Galena Summit.
Chad again. Running like a champ.
Mary, Cori, and Monica crossing the finish line!
Sumer, Tanya, and Chad crossing the finish!
Cori, Mary, Sumer, Monica, Chad, Tanya. What a group!
Once we were done eating we all headed back into Stanley where we got a suite in the Mountain Village hotel that slept all 8 of us. A few of us even utilized the private natural hot springs owned by the hotel. It’s an enclosed natural hot spring located right by the stream that runs through Stanley. The building has big barn doors that can be opened to give a wonderful view of the Sawtooth Mountains while you soaked. It was beautiful! We also enjoyed watching a momma fox and four of her pups running around and playing on our way to and from the hot springs.
Overall, it was a great adventure. Who knows, perhaps we’ll do it again next year. Maybe then I’ll be able to run in it.
1 comments:
Those pictures are amazing. I've never been to the Sawtooths. Looks like we'll have to plan a trip.
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