Reno Tahoe Odyssey

I realized that I never said anything about my big run of the year. On the last day of school, I ran in the Reno-Tahoe Odyssey. Twelve people per team, running a total of 178 miles. Our team ended up running for around 28 hours. I got a little more than an hour of sleep in those 28 hours. I was still able to pick Peter up from school and we started driving up to meet with the team at about 2pm.

It was an exhausting time. I ran three separate instances, totally more than 14 miles. My first run was up in Tahoe on the north shore. I was handed the "baton" at about 6pm. That first run was harder than I expected. I had been in the car for a few hours already, following the other runners and getting up to the start location. It was a high altitude, so it felt really hard to breathe for the first bit. But overall, I ran that whole leg - more than six miles, more than I usually run at once and I felt pretty good afterwards.

I'm usually so good at stretching and cooling down after I run, but in these cases each time I finished, it was time to hop in the van and go get food or rest or something like that. I was worried I'd feel really sore, but I did ok.

The second leg was more like 3am for me. It was a short run, but I was on my own in the middle of the dark for those 40 minutes. I felt pretty good during the middle of the night. I took over driving the van while everyone else rested. Driving up and down the mountains in the dark is rather exciting for me and everyone was going slowly because they were trying to stay somewhat close to their teammates. We lost sight of one of the girls on our team and by the time we found her, it was time to pass off the baton to me. I was standing in line for the bathroom when I saw her coming, so I skipped out of line to start running.

My last leg started in the afternoon. It was hot, I had been up for a long time, and I hadn't eaten nearly enough breakfast/lunch to run five miles. I got through the first three, but the second two involved a lot of walking for me. I heard afterwards that that's about how everyone did it, but for a while I was disappointed with myself for not making it running the whole way.

I was the last runner each leg, so on my last round, I got to run through the finish line. Most of my team ran next to me for the last 100 yards and for as much as we were excited to cross the finish line, we were more excited to just be done. We were hungry and tired. We stood in line to get our team picture and our medals, but then it was time to find food and drive home.

The race finished in Reno, so after leaving we still had about an hour of driving to get home. I tried to be awake for the boys when I got home, but I mostly just sat around nodding as they told me some stories about what had been going on (the fishing derby) and I went to bed around 7pm.

I felt pretty good the next day; accomplished for doing such a huge thing and not too sore. Even that next day, I was pretty convinced that I wanted to do it again next year. We'll see what the year brings, but it was a fun (and tiring) time.