week 32 - "River to River Run"

  

Here I am running one of my three relay legs.

                                                                                      

The elevations of one of my 3-mile runs.

     Last weekend I ran an 80-mile relay through the hills of Shawnee National Forest in deep southern Illinois with seven people I had never met and never heard of before we gathered in Carbondale the night before the race.
     It was the River to River Relay, from the bluffs of the Mississippi River to the Ohio River in Golconda, Ill. It was a tough, tough run for a 63-year-old jogger but one of the most rewarding and magical days I have ever experienced.
     My teammates on the Flatlanders of Palatine, Ill., were three women from East-Ccentral Illinois, three men  from the Chicago suburbs and a man from Salem, Ill.
     I have heard of the River to River Relay and thought it would be a good experience but always thought I might be able to do it with friends from the Charleston area. River to River accepts 250 teams of eight runners and gets 400-plus applications the first hour registration opens in October. Apparently, a guy in Palatine applied, was accepted but had no team.
     Via the Internet (yes, we all could have been perverts), we made connections. The other four men were solid runners. The three women and I are joggers and not particularly fast. No one cared until we found out the night before the race that teams must finish by 8 p.m. because the finish line closes and race officials go home. It is too dangerous to be on the rural roads in the forest after dark. Teams are assigned starting times. We were to start at 8:15 a.m., meaning we had to run the hilly course in 11 hours and 45 minutes. Some hills went up or down sharply by as much as 400 feet.
     Each of us would run about 10 miles in legs of about 3.3 miles at a time. You wait hours between your legs. I was the seventh of eight runners. We got up at 4:45 a.m. to get to the Mississippi River by the required 7:15 a.m. Our first runner started at 8:15 and I didn't run my first leg until about 10:45 a.m. The temp was in the 40s and windy.
     So, you spend a lot of time in the van with your teammates. We got to now each other. We encouraged each other. We laughed and told stories, learned about each others' jobs and families. And just really, really liked each other. It's hard to explain. But eight strangers got so tight. We worried about each other and rooted for each other and grew determined to finish before 8 p.m.
     We did it.
     As the day wore on, Tim, runner No. 8, told one of the others that if I got the baton to him at 25 minutes to 8, he would run his final 3.3 miles in 24 minutes to bat the clock.
     I gave him the baton at 7:27 -- 33 minutes before the deadline -- and he finished in 23 minutes at 7:50 p.m. He was a horse! We were all so excited that all eight of us ran the final two blocks with him.
     We stayed in the little town of Golconda (pop. 750) for about an hour eating a sandwich and having a beer. But the three women and one of the Chicago guys had to go home that night. So we drove an hour or so back to Carbondale, had some final laughs, said some sad goodbyes with long hugs and after 17-plus hours of togetherness, separated and returned to being the people we were the day before.


The Flatlanders came together on and off the course.

      Except we aren't the same people. We have all been in contact by e-mail the past few days. Two of us (I was one) cried when telling our spouses about it and all agree that we have somehow been changed by accepting and meeting this tremendous challenge while learning to care about perfect strangers.
     It truly was a fantastic "adventure" in retirement.