Wasatch Back Relay

This past weekend my sister, Shannon and I participated in the 3rd annual Wasatch Back Relay with some friends from her ward. It was, hands down, the most fun I have ever had running! It was a blast! The route was 176 miles from Hardware Ranch (near Logan) into Park City. Each team had 12 members and each member of the team ran 3 different legs. It took our team 28 hours to finish. (We weren't very fast. The winning team, BYU's men's cross country team, finished in just over 17 hours!) Each team was allowed to have 2 vans/ cars on the course. I ran the first leg so I rode in Van #1. It took somewhere between 4-6 hours for everyone in our van to finish running each leg. After that, we tried to sleep and/or shower and get ready for our next run. You can go to the race web page and get more info on it:
http://www.wasatchbackrelay.com/index.html
(It hasn't been updated yet with pictures from this year.)

I ran legs 1, 13, and 25. Since I ran the first leg, I got to begin at the official starting line. 20 teams started every hour, on the hour, for 9 hours, starting at 8:00am. Don't I look like I started off fast! (It's okay to laugh now!) Despite my poor form, I managed to run 3.8 miles in 31 minutes. Not fast for some people, but pretty good for me!


My second leg ran straight up a canyon. In 4.5 miles, I gained almost 1200 feet. It was insane! To make it worse, it was 98 degrees when I started at 4:30pm. Amazingly enough, I still managed to finish in good time. (Where was this speed when I ran the marathon?!?) This is a picture of us congratulating one of the girls in our van after she ran a great second leg. (I had already finished my run, that's why I'm smiling... or perhaps I'm laughing at my farmer's tan!) Riding in the van and having everyone cheer for you, then hopping back in the van and cheering for everyone else was what made it so much fun! The Owen family definitely needs to run this together sometime!