Actually, with the exception of the physical discomfort and a late-in-the-race "oops" from the race directors, this year's Spokane to Sandpoint was a wonderful experience. I ran with an entirely new group of ladies and once school was out we did a lot of training together. Creating bonds and friendships is mostly why I run so I was very rewarded by agreeing to this crazy adventure. Together, the 12 of us, covered 200.2 miles in 31 hours.
I had 19 miles of the 200.2. My first leg was straight down Mt. Spokane. It was 5-miles of constantly engaging my core and quads, all the while wearing a lovely rainbow wig. Yes, I had the pleasure of drawing the leg with the "Wild Wig" contest.
Five miles later I made our team's first exchange and then promptly went over and sat in the creek. The water was cool and refreshing, but I'm not sure just how effective my 5-minute soak was. Oh well.
We were split into two groups of 6. I'm not sure what the other group did while their runners were running, but for our group (Van 1) we found time to have some fun and take some silly pictures.
Now, truth be told, these pictures were all taken on the first day after I first leg while were all still pretty fresh and excited. As the race progressed and we reached our last running leg, most of us looked like this
My second leg was a night leg and again, only a little over 5 miles. But again, it was a hill run. This time instead of going down for 5 miles, I ran up for 3 miles. Jen, our team captain, calls me a mountain goat because I do go up hill relatively fast compared to the others on our team, but I was not thrilled that I had all hills. And I particularly dislike hills back-to-back like I faced during the S2S. I missed my projected pace on legs 2 and 3 which irritated me greatly and left me feeling disappointed, defeated, and like I let the team down.
My third and final leg was probably my hardest. It was just .2 miles short of 9 miles. It had a short, steep hill right off the bat and then I climbed to a plateau. But even on the plateau, it wasn't flat. It was a false-flat that inclined and I had to run on forest service road. The road was mostly packed gravel, but washboardy and pot-holed almost the whole way. And you know, if what goes up also must come down, and my last mile was all down. I got to within 200 yards of the exchange and I wasn't even sure that I was moving in a forward direction. I tried hard to sprint to the exchange but my legs were like lead weights hanging from my hips. I'm sure I felt slower and worse than I actually was; at least I'm hoping that was the case.
Van 1 was a blast. We met some awesome teams along the way, some that were very inspirational. There was one team that we met that had registered with 12 runners and finished with 8. One runner dropped out about a week before the race started. One runner just didn't show up to the start and two runners dropped out after their first leg. That team just kept plugging away and did finish.
Van 2 was full of awesome ladies as well, but we didn't see each other except for at the major exchanges. That is probably only one of the bummers about this race...while one van is running the other is inactive and resting. I don't see any way around that though.
When I ran with some of the group the other day, they were already talking and planning for next year's S2S. And who am I kidding, this will be just like childbirth. I will do it again because the good memories outweigh the pain and pain fades (usually).
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