I'm an official R2R runner

Last night at 7:00, I officially paid up and became a River to River runner. The River to River run is a 80 mile eight person relay race. Each runner on the team runs three legs totalling about 10 miles over hilly terrain through southern Illinois. The goal of the race is to finish before the sun goes down so your team gets their race t-shirt.

This will be my third year doing the race. The first year I was drafted by the hashers when they needed an extra body. I ran in the fifth leg (Hard, Moderate, Moderate/Easy). It was a blast. In fact I was inspired to borrow a poem to record the experience.

Last year, I jumped on to a team early since I knew how much fun it was. I talked a friend of mine into joining the team as an alternate. Over the course of the spring we went for some nutty training runs. In the end, he couldn't go and we ended up picking up some friends of friends to finish out the team. The team that we ended up with was not in as good of shape as the team that we put together the year before. I ended up running the 8th leg (Hard, Moderate, Hard) and due to time constraints was the only person to run all of my legs.

This year the line up looks a lot stronger than last year. We kept all of the strongest runners and added two very good runners. Some of our weaker runners from last year have been training hard. So if I don't get my butt in gear, I might end up being the weakest link. That's not going to happen if I have anything to say about it.