At the end of February, Carlee flew down to Arizona to run with me in the Ragnar Relay Del Sol. For those of you who haven't heard about this race, it's a 200-mile, 12 person overnight relay race, and it's awesome! My roommate organized 4 teams from the Tucson YSA group including a few out of towners, so Thursday night we all went up to Buckeye and then headed early Friday morning to begin our race. This is a picture of our team, or at least most of it. We were the Cycling Sunbeams. The meaning of the name is too long of a story to blog about, but you can ask me later.
So, the race began in Wickenburg, AZ which I've never been to before. I was the teams second runner, and Carlee was number six. The team was broken up into 2 vans of six people and here's how it goes. Runner 1 begins, van drives a mile or two ahead and cheers for the runner as they pass, van drives a few more miles and cheers for the runner again, van drives ahead to the next exchange, runner 1 tags runner 2 with a slap bracelet, repeat. Each person runs 3 different times with anywhere from 13 to 21 miles total. Carlee ran around 16 miles and I ran about 19. Total race time: about 30 hours. Here's a few pictures from this crazy adventure:
Now, you may be thinking that we were completely crazy and that this doesn't sound like fun at all, and while that may be partly true, it was truly one of the funnest races I've ever done. Partying in the van and cheering on our runners was awesome. We were blasting music the whole time, getting pumped, getting ready or recovering from running, eating tons of snacks, etc. And while van 2 was running, we would go to different houses and play with some of the other teams from Tucson. The overnight run was by far my favorite. I ran from 10-11p, which wasn't bad. It was nice and cool, and definitely my best run. Carlee ran from 2-3a which was pretty exciting and she was battling it out with a runner from one of the other teams the whole time so it kept her awake and motivated. She beat him to the exchange point, but due to an unfortunate miscommunication, our next runner wasn't ready yet. She was amazing, though.
Basically it was just one long party for 30 hours. Lots of adrenaline, lots of loud music, lots of cheering, and lots of sugar afterwards. I have never been quite so tired in my entire existence. After the race, all 50 or so of us went to one of the racer's house for dinner and it was the most hilarious sight I have ever seen. Just try to imagine 50 active, healthy, college aged young adults literally waddling around in slow motion, crying every time they stood up or sat down, trying desperately not to move or fall asleep while eating more food than you could ever imagine. It was pretty amazing. Overall, it was a great experience, and I'm glad Carlee got to come down and party with me before she left on her mission. We also got some great views of Arizona along the way.
So that was like a month ago. Since then I have experienced the joy of attending a school that actually has a spring break! It was pretty amazing. I went to San Diego to visit a mission companion and stayed almost the whole week. We went to the beach, the temple, the zoo, some gardens, walked around Old Town, saw the Mormon Battalion thing (which was actually more exciting than I had envisioned) and ate a ton. I would post pictures, but my companion had to work all week so most of my tourist outings were solo and all my photos have no people in them. But it was a blast and I loved it!
How fun Breanna! Looks like you had a blast!
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