I Ran and Nothing was Chasing Me!

Harumph. I wrote the text of this post first, then put in the pics, and now blogger isn't letting me rearrange things. So, looks like pics are first, and they're in reverse order. Excellent!

First up, the Yukon River. The finish of the race. What race? Keep reading!

Teammate running through beautiful Canada. Canada?! Yes, keep reading!

The route was NOT ugly.

Skagway. This was the first heat to start. Notice they got to start in daylight.

The team: No whine. More wine. Some of the members wanted to be No wine. More beer. I think that's a pretty clever name...maybe next year.

This past weekend I ran in the Klondike Road Relay. The relay is 110 miles and travels from Skagway, Alaska to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory - it's a former Gold Rush Stampeder route. It's so long you have to carry a passport. What was I thinking??

I ran Leg 1. The good news: I was done early. The bad news: it's 9 miles uphill. Here's a cross section of the course.... www.cmaj.ca/cgi/reprint/156/4/476.pdf My team kicked off at 10PM, so it was pitch black. I thought I was going to miss out on stunning scenery and was a little bummed about starting in the dark, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It was only me and the 10 feet of road in front of me...and the girl I was chasing (thank you Maggie for keeping me going!). I was able to take the entire 9 miles 10 feet at a time, rather than rounding a corner in the daylight and seeing miles of uphill climbing, which would've likely resulted in me hurling myself into the gorge I would've also seen. Turns out running at night is WAY cool. I ran the whole thing, did much better than I was expecting, and even thought about taking up running races. That must've been the endorphins - I raced in a Tuesday Night Race Series event last night and was wondering why the h*ll I thought I liked racing so much. I was in p-a-i-n.

I don't have any pics of me running, but these give you an idea of how it all went down. The route takes you through some beautiful country, and the fall colors were at their peak. I think I'll do it again next year!