WWR: I'm serious - this really didn't look so bad when Jessica ran it.

What? You actually want me to finish this thing? Okay, well, the story continues.

We got up at the crack of dawn, piled into our vans and went to the start, at the Budweiser Center. True to team BOMIAS form, we missed the exit (last time one van went the wrong direction on the interstate). Apparently Fort Collins is on the edge of BFE since we had to drive like ten miles to teh next exit.

But we made it, with about a half hour before our start (we were supposed to be there an hour ahead of time). I enlisted Allison as Van 1 Captain and set her to work doing part of the check-in, while I stood in the long ass line for the waiver check.

Then, we hear "Will someone from Back off man, I'm a scientist come to the announcer's tent please." I sent Allison over, figuring there was a problem. But no, they just wanted to interview us over the announcement system. After Allison gave a few tepid answers, I rescued her and tried to be chipper at 5:45 in the morning. I believe John has this on video, but unless he You-tubes it, you will never see it :-)

Anyway, with a few minutes to spare, we got Marie all ready to start the party.
I totally stole this picture from Brady's Facebook page. I'm glad someone took pics!

That's Marie in the pink shorts. Marie is a friend of Kelsey, who is president of the ISU Nordic Ski Club and who I went to Minnesota with for this race. I spent approximately one hour with Marie the whole weekend, since I was in Van 2. I learned after the fact that Marie was famous for opening the minivan door and leaning out and yelling things like "You're so sexy and I want to have your babies!" at the other runners. John also has video of this, and I really hope he does You-tube it for everyone' enjoyment.

So went Marie off and then the long wait for Van 2 began.

We went to the Waffle House.

We went to a very rustic looking Walmart and bought random last minute supplies. Since starting the diss writing, I refuse to read anything of substance, so I got the third Twilight installment (or chick crack as Jamie calls it). I don't even really like the books and I don't like Bella yet I can't stop reading.

We also got some car chalk and for the first time in BOMIAS history, we actually decorated our vans. It only took 4 years. Of course, I am not sure there are any photos of the vans. Other people took photos of our vans. Little known fact: John is an art nerd for his job and once illustrated a book where Chuck Norris was pitted against Mr. T. So Van 1 had a pretty good rendition of Chuck Norris on the side. Van 2 was not as artistic, but the smart kids liked the "Hey there, nice asymptote!" on the side. Which leads me to believe that the next time we do this race that something like "This is my asymptoting over the pass" should be our slogan.

We went to exchange 6 and waited and chatted with the other teams. Roughly at about noon, Van 1 rolled in and Kelsey handed off to Shaun. Shaun is like a bullet and only had a 3 mile leg, so we got ourselves together and sped out of the exchange to make sure I was ready when he got there.

This was my hardest leg. I knew I just had to get through this one and then everything else would be easier. As team captain, I assigned myself relatively short legs (12 miles total), mostly since my running hadn't been as strong as I would have liked it to be. So this leg was 3.8 miles with 400 feet of elevation gain, most of it in the second half.

I started out at about 12:30ish. You notice right away that there is no oxygen. But I went into this leg with no time expectations, so I just focused on getting through it. I even passed someone in the first half! I was petrified they would pass me back on the hill, but they didn't. We chatted as I passed them and they were from San Diego, so they were also feeling the lack of oxygen.

That hill seemed to go on forever. I told myself that if I started running slower than 15 minute miles that I could walk, but I never got that slow, so running was still a faster alternative. I probably averaged 13 minute miles up that hill. As an evil blow, the "1 Mile left!" sign was about 1.6 miles from the exchange. Fortunately because of Garmin, I knew the sign was a lying liar.

When the exchange was in sight, the girl ahead of me (from the Sofa Kings, who we yoyoed with quite a bit) was walking so I decided to add one more piece of roadkill to my leg. At the moment I was passing her, some speedy dude came out of nowhere and said "C'mon girls, we're almost there!" He blew by us but inspired her to start running again, bastard! But I managed to stay ahead of her and finished my leg. 3.8 miles/11:56 min/mi - hey at least I kept it under 12 min/miles!

Then we sent Jamie off - he described his leg below.

Then Brady went off for a big climb. The dude from Team 11 "Can You Beer Me Now?" was determined to catch him (after Jamie passed their runner). That dude was working and was on Brady's tail. He finally passed Brady, but he looked like he was hurting. So that established that team as our nemesis, even though I don't think they knew that AND our Van 1 really liked their Van 1 and had nicknames for them.

Dede and Lauren finished up our set of legs and we went to the same restaurant we went to last time (the Pot Belly) and began the long drive to Exchange 18.

Next up: Seriously, you need to run a relay just to experience the joy of the middle of the night leg.