Dude, where's my van?

Ha, every year I do this...I ask myself the same question. Why? Then I run this crazy race and I realize that even though I am totally crazy I have a total blast....although I was asking myself "why" more than once this particular year! Let me explain....

For whatever reason I always get stuck with wonderful start time or 5:00AM IN LOGAN! Ask yourself, do you want to wake up any earlier than you need to? Me neither....so I enlisted the help of my sister Britney.

Let's back up a step here. Suzie is awesome and has worked with my mom, for like ever (yes I just said like, because that's how long it's been!) so she is pretty much just like a sister of mine. I jumped on her team last year and had a blast. Nicole and I got to know some pretty great people. We obviously had a good time so we decided to do it again minus the 6 crazies we had last year. That meant we had to find more people. In the end, because of injuries and whatnot, we had to switch it all up and we got two guys we knew nothing about except that they were friends of her friends. Sounds safe enough right? Steve was not extremely excited about the fact that I would be hanging out with 2 single 30 something guys (he was thinking I was going to get kidnapped or hurt or who know's what....I guess that's the cop coming out), but like I said I was pretty much stuck with them so we tried to make the most of it!

We had a meeting the week before to decide all the details. My van decided to bring our food. I emailed the two guys to see if they wanted to pitch in (no worries if not, of course) and they were down so we gave them the simple assignment of ice and rolls. To start it all out they didn't bring anything. So once we picked everyone up we made them stop and get a dollar bag of ice and a dollar bag of rolls....thanks for pitching in! Ha.

We finally got to Britney's house. They let us sleep in the basement...where they had a king size bed and TJ's and Gages beds. Need help with your math? That equals 4 places to sleep. Got it? Well they had us upstairs for waffles (so sweet). One guy went down, the other one followed him about 5 minutes later and we followed about 10 minutes after that. So there were 4 girls and 2 boys and guess where all the girls slept? ON THE FLOOR!!!! Yes that is right, at my sisters house 4 girls had to sleep on the floor because one took the king bed and one took TJ's and Gage's room!!!!! SERIOUSLY? Yes, this is actually what happened. I figured since I had to deal with these people for the next 2 days pretty much that we'd make the most of it, not a big deal. I think in the morning I made a passive aggressive comment about how that was "really considerate" of them to leave us a nice comfy place to sleep!

So off we went. When we were running I felt that we had a pretty good groove. It was "nice" trying to get to know one another. Really though.....it was smooth sailing. Great time. I got to snap this pic of everyone at our first big exchange. Here's the gang, minus me and Cameron (who was running). This leg was awesome because runner 6 got to wear a sombrero the last half mile in exchange for a free meal from cafe rio. You looked good Nicole! Actually I do believe Cafe Rio had a van that said funny things on it like "extra meat"!

Another reason I was having a good time was the fact that we got to run through some of the most beautiful scenery!

Pretty much what you are pushing for it this beaut.....the one mile to go sign! Once you see this bad boy you are home free! It's a good thing!

One of our "favorites" in motion. I am grateful that he ran the same leg I had to run last year....which sucked! And I'm even more glad that the other one had to run #3 spot, which is where I was supposed to be until we made the switch and I opted for an easier leg. If nothing else that is what I am grateful for them for!

Good old Nicole. This gal is my running buddy extraordinaire! We always have such a blast. This was her second leg, which was NOT FUN for sure...she is a champ because this leg sucked!

Too bad Nicole couldn't enjoy the beautiful view because she was probably cursing this leg! I'm not even going to tell you about our second exchange down time....but let's just say they ate all our food and left us steaming mad when they left us hight and dry in the parking lot! Let's just say these guys were painting a pretty BIG picture of why they were still single!

After Nicole's leg it was about 9:30...plenty of time to get to Oakley and eat dinner AND get a decent amount of sleep, we thought! Pretty much all the gals wanted to just go ahead and sleep at the exchange site so we would already be there and not have to worry about getting up early to drive to the exchange. We slept at Morgan High School last year and were late to our exchange, not to mention we had to get up way early....AND you actually had to pay to sleep there this year. Sleeping in a room with 500 people snoring in sync on wrestling mats was not appealing to me! One of the guys had no problem whatever we decided but the other was being such a BUTT! He kept saying that he really wanted to sleep in the high school because it was about "quality of sleep and not quantity". Are you kidding me....there is NO quality of sleep whether you are on the grass or a sweaty mat! I'm pretty sure there is no "quality" sleep in this race in general! We finally got him to go to Oakley but he got lost on the way and we finally got there at 11:30! Let me remind you that we had not eaten yet and were starving and tired! Well the Polar King was open and they wanted to go grab something to eat. They promptly went in, ordered, and sat down to EAT for 45 MINUTES! I was livid, but really what was the point. Among Melynda telling me under her breath that she felt likes she was talking to her 4 year old, we were just holding on to the fact that we would only have to be with them a few more hours!

By my last leg I was totally dragging because we pretty much didn't eat dinner when we got there we were so hammered and felt like sleep (what little we got) was more important! The dragging in motion!

I was happy when my leg was over though! At least my ladies were awesome!!!!!

Lacey totally kicked butt, along with everyone else that ran!

Poor Melynda.....this picture doesn't even do her poor blisters justice because they were NASTY and they looked like they hurt so bad! She rocked it too. Her leg's sucked too!

Just in case you cant read this dude's shirt it says "running sucks".....by this point, I couldn't agree more!

Here's our team....minus Cameron again because he was running! You know the dude in the back is totally trying to get in our pic! Love it! Even though we had to run with two butts I had a great time, and have had a blast laughing about our experiences! Thanks ladies I really did have a blast! Thanks for listening to my rants and raves! Good bye Wasatch Back...until next time!