The Big Race: Henchman with Maracas

I'm still excited about finishing the big race, so I’ll spend this week telling you all about it. I'll make will feel like you are there! Minus the smell.

We had to leave the house at 5:30 AM on Saturday. Mandy was ecstatic that we were ready 15 minutes early. I was not!

We met up with the rest of our van, those awesome girls I was telling you about. Kelly, Stef, Heather, Jess and Mandy. I played soccer with all of them in high school. It was so great to spend the weekend with them and get to compete together again. GO GRIZZLIES!
Our heat started at 7:30 AM. I positioned myself right at the start line to get a great picture of our lead runner, Kelly. However, my plans for a Sports-Illustrated-quality shot were dashed when the starting gun startled me, causing me to bobble the camera. I also had it set on a sports setting which takes a million pictures right in a row, which I forgot about, causing me to bobble my camera more. So I threw my camera in the air like one of the Three Stooges, got a crappy picture of Kelly’s back and a lovely picture of that other girl.

So the race got under way! One of us would run, and the other 5 would ride in the van about 2 miles down the road. There we would wait like henchman with maracas.
Actually we would would wait with Gatorade and water and use the maracas to cheer like crazy when our teammate ran into sight.
We would give them fluids, make sure they were ok, then peel out and drive another 2 more miles down the road to wait again.

That’s how it went. You were either running, driving the van, passing along Gatorade or shaking a maraca. After all 6 of us ran, we got about a 5 hour break while the rest of our team ran. During our break, we found some nice port-a-potties and set up camp.
More tomorrow!

Song of the Day

I can't get this song out of my head! Love VV Brown's Shark in the Water.