We once again had the opportunity to run the River to River relay in Southern IL. It is an extremely difficult event to get into. In October, you have to sign up for the event at 12:00 pm sharp - there are over 450 teams that try to get in and only 250 that are accepted. You have to type quick and hope that your computer is fast. We got a 6:45 start time; we had to cross the finish line by 8:00 pm. This was doable given last year we had an 8:15 start time and needed to maintain an 8:48 mile pace. Most of the drive to the eastern boundary of IL was in the dark; but the sun was starting to peak up as our group began.
We were Team Mitacek - running in honor of our Uncle Tim (Sarah his daughter was also on our team). We had a few other Harrisburg friends - one of which is the organizer of the Shawnee Marathon so we put up a sign hoping to bring more advertising to the event. She is hoping for over 1,000 runners this year (a tough goal); she was able to get the run to be a Boston qualifier.
My brother Joe started the race, but I didn't get a good picture of him handing the baton to Sarah. Sarah then handed it to me.
I handed it to Rebecca.
Rebecca handed it to Brian.
Rob then handed the baton to Beth.
This is a picture of a typical exchange. We had a hard time with the exchanges this year and getting good parking spots. It seemed we ended up at the end of the line...a lot. We got our share of walking in.
Beth then handed the baton to Alex who was the end of the rotation. We did the rotation three times for a total of 24 legs.
Alex would hand the baton to Joe.
Here is a good one of Brian to Rob.
And a good one of Alex to Joe.
A nice picture of Sarah finishing up her last leg.
And finally, we had an alternate Jeri Lyn. This actually worked out really well for Beth's leg wasn't feeling well after her second leg. So, Jeri took Rebecca's last leg and Rebecca switched to take Beth's.
Rob had the most difficult leg of the day which was also his last. He was happy to be done. This leg was difficult because of the extreme uphill. He did good.
Alex finished bringing the baton into Golconda, IL. This church lies at the last turn of the race. The bell is rung every time a team comes into town.
We got our "finisher" t-shirts (great long sleeve white ones) and went up by the Ohio river to take our team picture.
And then walking back towards the center of town - it was starting to be a beautiful sunset. We don't need to talk about what time we finished - as apparently the heat/wind/and cold winter left us all a bit slower than last year. But, we had fun and I suppose that is all that matters.
Should have some new pictures in a few weeks as we will be heading to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park and Conagree National Park...can't wait! I was reading a recent review on canoeing at Conagree and it stated "snakes kept falling out of the trees into the canoe and water - we won't be back". So, we will NOT be canoeing!!
2 comments:
That looks like too much work to me, but congratulations!
Wow! I can't imagine that a race is so popular half of the runners can't compete ;-) It looks like great weather to run such a race.
Post a Comment