Michael & Liz are Bloggable

I'm blogging about this now because I don't know how much time I will have the rest of the week. This weekend I am running the Blue Ridge Relay. Here's a link to the site, in case you are curious to read more. The best way to describe it is just to answer both the questions I had at first as well as questions other people have asked me. Most people who read this blog and don't talk to me too terribly often wouldn't know what I'm talking about, so I figured this method would be best.

What is the Blue Ridge Relay? It's a 208 mile relay race starting in southern Virginia (Grayson Highlands National Park) and ending in downtown Asheville, NC. It roughly follows the Blue Ridge Parkway, and some runs are actually on the parkway. But each team, and there are about 100 teams, gets a group of 6-12 people together and you run the entire thing non-stop. Our team has 12 people because that is psychotic enough.

How did you get involved with this? It's almost like Six Degrees of the Team Captain. A guy who used to work with Meg who is married to Matt asked Matt if he wanted to run and he said "no way, that sounds miserable, but sure". Matt heard they needed more people and asked me to run and I said "no way, that sounds miserable, but sure". Matt also got another friend of ours, Moose, to run, so it's almost like Matt is a quarter of the team.

How far are you running individually? It averages out to 16 miles per person. I am doing 15.4 miles of it.

When is it? Apparently the race officially starts Friday September 17th at 7:30AM but not all teams start at that time. Because some teams are faster than others, they start later so that everyone can finish relatively close to each other. So there really is no way of knowing when we'll start. This team last year finished in 28 hours, but some teams took 34 hours. So we could start anywhere from 7:30AM to 1:30 PM. I'd probably guess around Noon for us. There is really no way to tell until race day... when we're told.

How long will this take? Like I said, the team we are on finished in 28 hours last year so we'll finish Saturday afternoon. Only half the team is the same from last year though, so there's no way of knowing how long it'll take us. They averaged a 7:56 minute per mile pace and that sounds about right for our pace. The team name has changed since last year too, we are the "Runegades" this year.

What are the logistics? Each runner in a group of 12 does 3 legs, so there are a total of 36 legs to run of the relay race. There are 2 vans. Each van has 6 runners. I am going up with Van 1 and camping on Thursday night at the state park where the race starts. Van 1 will drop off and pick up runners 1-6 as they run. At the checkpoint in which runner 6 is done, Van 2 will be meeting there to drop off runner 7. Van 1 then goes to checkpoint 13 to wait and Van 2 drops off and picks up all the runners 7-12 until they are done. At checkpoint 13, runner 1 goes again and it continues like that.

Which runner are you? Runner 1. I'm psyched to be starting the race! Woo hoo!

How far are your legs? My first leg is 4.0 miles 900 feet downhill. I'm going to try to fly through that, I'm aiming for 30 minutes. My second leg (the 13th total) is 7.1 miles with a 400 foot ascent and 400 foot descent in the middle. I'd be happy with a time under an hour. My last leg (the 25th overall) is 4.3 miles and basically flat with a 150 foot hill at the end. I'll aim for roughly 32 minutes for that one. Not sure how difficult 150 feet is, but I imagine I'll be tired after the long night, no sleep, and lots of running.

It will be tough. We have to run in the middle of the night with reflective vests and headlamps in the middle of the blue ridge mountains. We'll be fighting sleep to stay awake for the legs we have to run at night and we'll be sitting in a van with 5 other smelly, gross people from having run really far and really fast. Hopefully each check point has a bathroom so I can take a bird bath after my run.

I love taking on new challenges like this. I could not be more psyched or have more anticipation for the weekend. It really will be an adventure. I'll have to bring the camera and take tons of pictures. Hopefully this turns into a yearly thing for me, Matt, and Moose. Maybe we'll start our own team one day.