We Survived The Sawtooth Relay!

We survived our first Sawtooth Relay. I have to say my team rocked. We wanted our finish time to be less than 12 hours and our finish time ended up being 10 hours and 40 minutes. Pretty sweet if you ask me.

My hubby ran the first leg and our start time was 2:15 am. He said that it was a little crazy running alone in the dark in the wilderness. He was so much faster than the other 4 people with our start time. He was out there on his own.

This our friend Craig. Man, doesn't he look chipper? And it is just after 3 am.

He is actually the reason I started running. A friend and I wanted to get in shape so we decided to train for a 5k that took place on Craig's birthday. A group of us ran then went to breakfast. It was awesome that we incorporated exercise into our celebration. I have been running off and on since.

Cold and a little anxious (this was her first race) my stepmomma Kelley set off on her first leg. This whole experience came together because of her. She asked me quite a while back if I would be on the relay team with her. Hesitantly I said I would. It was great motivation for me to get back into running and I am very thankful I got the opportunity to run the race with her.

This our sweet volunteer, my stepbrother Taylor. He got his butt out of bed and to his designated spot by 2:30 am. It was a cold morning and he had to put in a 5 hour shift or we would get disqualified. He survived his shift, though he was certainly cold and tired!

This is my hubby Mark handing off to Craig at Galena Summit 8,701 feet. Mark ran 5.35 miles with an elevation gain of 1,331 feet. He did awesome passing people all the way up.

This is Craig running down the Ketchum side of Galena Summit. He was smoking. He mentioned that he was counting all the people that he past but quit counting at 8. He ran over 6 miles and had an elevation loss of 1,411 feet.

This is my beautiful stepsister Hannah at her first exchange point. I don't think that she knew what to expect when she signed up for the relay. That said, she rocked it! She put it all out there. She did look at me during her first leg and say,

"never again." I hope that before next year rolls around we will all have forgotten how painful it was.

This is me running away from the team as they were standing along side of the road giving me water and much needed support. The second leg was much more difficult then the first even though it was shorter, warmer, and supposedly down hill. I must have been tired from my first leg. All in all I did better then I thought I would, and I did love it. What a beautiful place to run!

This is Seren our last minute substitute running her last leg. She did amazing. This is the last picture that I took at the relay but I know everyone else has some so maybe I will post more once I get them.

Thank you, thank you to my whole team and to Kelley (the person who came up with this awesome idea in the first place). I really loved the experience and I am absolutely planning on running it again in 2011! Also thanks to our volunteer Taylor. And our support crew: Dad for driving the van, my sister and her family for coming to support us and also for watching my baby, and Jeff for providing entertainment for the kids and Riley dog and of course for driving our bed from Stanley to Ketchum without hitting a runner in the process. Go team!