What am I going to do with myself?

I have nothing to stress about!

Well, at least in the relay category.

I have plenty to stress about when it comes to instruments that aren't working and equipment that should have been in the water yesterday and how on earth am I such a slow swimmer and why boys are so stupid.

But! In the relay category, we miraculously have a team.

Over two months before the race.

Last year, I was asking complete strangers two weeks before the race if they wanted to go to Colorado with us.

And we have a name. We are officially called "The Agony of Dafeet." I'll admit, I liked the other two top choices ("Aaargh" and the return of "Back off man, I'm a scientist") but I run a democracy here, not a dictatorship and the masses have spoken. I am pretty sure this is because the nerd factor on our team this year is a bit lower than last year (although not by much!). The GRR...Aaargh was totally a Joss Whedon reference which came up because I watched the entire season of Firefly in January. And we do have fewer scientists, and obviously fewer Ghostbuster fans :-)

So half the team are repeats from last year - Jessica, me, Teresa, Chrissy, Shaun, and Al - and we have six new runners.

As I mentioned before, Nisha is a friend of mine from the Peace Corps. We can entertain everyone with stories of taking rides from random drunk Haitian men because there are no taxis after midnight in Port-au-Prince.

Laurie and Audrey are bloggy friends. Laurie is a fellow ISU grad student, so we know each other IRL, but Audrey is just a brave soul who agreed to run with us :-) I would like to note that Audrey is doing a half-Ironman the weekend before the race! Totally badass!

John is Laurie's friend, although I have met him previously after we had a random discussion about the light on his bike helmet at the bestest coffee shop in Ames. When Jessica isn't being an agronomy grad student, she works here too.

Then lastly we have Kimberly and Kori, who I started on my long distance running journey with over two years ago through a running group through the city. We all remember the first "long run" we did - 4 miles and it sucked the entire way. Kimberly and I ran Grandma's Marathon together last year and the three of us are signed up for the Twin Cities Marathon this October.

So that's the cast of characters! This year I actually know them all! Seriously - last year I only knew three of my teammates before the race, and I was the team captain!