No this is not Ann. This is one of the other runners that I just had to take a picture of because her whole team ran with these fake bums hanging off the back of their pants. I think they were running their butts off. There were a lot of really cute costumes that I'm sure they were rethinking while having to run with it all on.
There was one team that was all super heros and another that was high schoolers (prom queen, athlete, cheerleaders, etc). The teams also decorated their team vans to match their costumes. There was one van that was titled "Business Time" from Flight of the Concords. In big letters across the side it said, "It's Business time and conditions are perfect". People got pretty creative with their decorating skills.
Here is Ann on her first of three legs of the race. She did so good on this leg that she shaved 18 minutes off her time. This was also the only time I got to see her run. I had to volunteer at the 5th exchange and this one is the 3rd. I thought it would be no problem getting to my exchange in time since Ann only had to run a little over three miles. Boy was I wrong.
After the 4th exchange it was all dirt road so everybody was going real slow as not to run over or dust out the runners. It took us an hour to drive ten miles. Oh, and if a volunteer is 30 minutes late for their assigned time the team they are volunteering for gets disqualified. Needless to say I was freaking out because they asked me to be there @ 1:30 and I wasn't able to get there until 2:30.
Thankfully they were very understanding as to why it took us so long to get there so we didn't hurt our team. Big D and I spent the next five hours trying to make runners, and drivers, laugh as they came into the exchange. It was funny to us how many people do not have a sense of humor. One thing that really stuck out to me was how many people thanked us for volunteering and telling us that they couldn't have the race without us. I thought that was really nice and thoughtful to acknowledge those standing out in the scorching sun just to help them so they could have this race.
I'm not going to lie to you, I was more than a little nervous about how my little Sis was going to do. Her doctor told her that her knee wasn't in the best of shape for a race like this. Her second leg started about 1 a.m. Marie, our baby sister, put a book on Ann's Ipod for her to listen to. Ann started listening to it on her second leg to help her not get freaked out about running in the pitch dark all alone. Needless to say, the book Marie put on there was about ghosts. We all got a kick out of that story.
Ann did finish the race. Her team had some medical problems but none of them were from her. They had a guy drop out of the race the night before it was to start. So, their team captain had to wrangle someone at the last minute to join their team or they couldn't race. The guy they got just happened to run a marathon the weekend before and his body wasn't totally healed from that race yet and he ended up tearing his achilles tendon in the middle of his second leg.
Caught up in all the excitement of the race, they were asking who would like to run the race next year and I said I'd do it. So, Ann and I have a race to train for next year. Big D said he'd come and be a volunteer for our team. What a supportive hubby I have. I tried to talk him into running it with me but he has a lot on his plate this next year, graduating with his Masters and getting his Black Belt. Who knows, maybe we'll do it together the next year.
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