6 Runners, 178 Miles, and 22 Hours, and 36 Minutes

Those numbers may not mean anything to most of you….but they sum up the weekend that our house just experienced.  This was the weekend of the Portland to Eugene relay that Ben and I first signed up for way back in November!  Unfortunately the other dedicated runner in our house, Chelsea, was going to be at Jr. High Conference on this particular weekend, so she couldn’t take part in this crazy adventure. Ben and I “pieced together” a team of six runners, which we appropriately named “Peacing It Together” over the last six months that included: ourselves of course, my sister Andrea, Tory- our good friend and a previous BVSer, and two folks that Jon went to Juniata with who now live in Portland- Chris and Kristen.  And our additional team member was Jon- who played a pretty vital role by doing most of the driving.  Most of the relay teams we were competing against consisted of 12 runners, where each runner would run 3 legs each of 3-8 miles, but we decided to take on a bigger challenge and have only 6 team members, meaning we would run 6 legs each of 3-8 miles.  Partially this was because we wanted a challenge, but even more so because we didn’t know 12 people who would be crazy enough to do this sort of thing.  So having only 6 runners classified us as an “Ultra” team.

Chris, Kristen, Andrea, Tory, Heather, and Ben...ready to run!

Ed Groff kindly allowed us to borrow his 1969 Chevy Suburban for the weekend, as we needed a vehicle that would hold at least 6 people.   And what a sight it was!  I think we had about as much fun riding around in this sweet vehicle as we did running!  When we pulled into the starting area, it was pretty clear that there would be no other vehicle quite like ours!

Here's Tory decorating our awesome vehicle

We were placed in the 7^th starting wave with two other teams: “the Rock” and “Heck Yeah”.  We knew we were off to a good start when my sister finished the first leg ahead of the two guys that she was running against….the competition was on!   

Ben's truckin' it down the road.

A hand off between Kristen and Chris on
Saturday morning during the final legs.

The whole event was an experience that really was beyond words, but some of the highlights and memories included…gorgeous sunshine and views of Mt. Hood and Jefferson on Friday evening, Ben kicking butt on a long stretch of hills as nightfall approached, watching the full moon rise, giving friendly honks to all of the runners we passed in the car, running in the dark with only a headlamp to guide the way, total exhaustion on Saturday morning after getting only 20 minutes of sleep the night before, sustaining ourselves with power bars, trail mix, and granola, and realizing that we were actually making pretty good time in this race and that we were passing a large number of the teams.  When our final runner, Tory, crossed the finish line in Eugene, we were elated to discover that we were the first "ultra" team to finish, and the 3^rd team overall to finish out of 40 teams!  Not bad for a team that was “peacing it together”.

At the finish line in Eugene!

And despite the sore muscles and exhaustion that we still felt the next day, I think all of us agreed that we’d be up for running another relay sometime in the future!

-Heather