Run Now Relay: Right on Hereford, Left on Boylston...

After we finish our last run, we check into our hotel. In the morning we see several other flight members downstairs getting breakfast and we start chatting.

Flash back for a second. At some point before the trip, Matt C's wife (woman. planner.) texted me asking if I needed to borrow any of his (man. non-planner.) reflective gear. I was skeptical that we'd ever be able to connect on the road, but I figured what the heck, sure. 

Back to the hotel on the last day. The day when most all of us were totally done with our legs. Matt C. casually walks up to me and says

 "oh hey, did you need my reflective gear?"

Sigh.

The rest of us start comparing stories from the road. Apparently, the Race Horse got into his room the night before, only to find -

someone was already sleeping in it.

It was Jason, the command center 18-wheeler driver that I likely scared a couple states back. That guy can't catch a break...

I overhear other funny things like Matt C. bragging that "EK ran 20 miles yesterday! The longest he'd ever run before that was 8 miles! ...and that was Tuesday!"

We all get back on the road and head to Hopkinton, MA. We still have one more flight on the road, and the plan is to have the entire team link up with the last runner and run together to finish the relay as one. The finish line for us is the start line for the Boston Marathon, where four of our members will line up two days later to run the marathon after this crazy journey.

Everyone's tired. At some point, we get a group text from a team member that asks if we can "take a nice reflective walk" for that last mile and we all laugh. But when our last runner comes trotting up, everyone got a little shot of adrenaline and we all took off towards the line together. It was emotional, to say the least (Watch here->Post by Run Now Relay.)
The team had been on the road for an entire week. I had only been with them half that time and even I felt emotional.

We take photos, drop our stuff off at hotels, and head to a banquet where we presented a check to Dream Big!, one of our charity partners.

The next day, several of the relayers headed back to Tennessee. Like I said, most of them had families they had left for a week, so it was time to get back. (Some of which didn't even fully explain that fact, like Former Green Beret Robert. At the meeting in Tennessee I attended, his wife mused "I don't understand why people are talking about how long this is. It's only Saturday to Sunday!" It was only when someone else in the room explained that it was not an overnight trip, that it was Saturday to the next Sunday that she realized just how long her husband was leaving. I bet that was a fun drive home!)

The rest of us stayed to enjoy Boston and cheer on our four teammates running the marathon.

How do I explain the marathon? I've ran in dozens and dozens of races through the years. I've finished my own marathon, I know what it feels like to be cheered on and encouraged by strangers when you need it. But something came over me while I stood on the sideline and cheered on other runners, other strangers, and saw the look of appreciation on their tired faces. We starting watching right at the finish line, seeing Meb win, with Ryan Hall close behind. We saw Shalane Flanagan come through, and then our Race Horse.

It was exhilarating to be at the finish, but I think it was even more touching when we moved back a bit and stood along the road right at the second to last turn the runners make. Hereford. There's a famous phrase that anyone involved with the Boston Marathon knows: Right on Hereford, Left on Boylston. Those are the final directions before you see the finish line. Once you hear those words, you know you are in the home stretch.

I watched multiple runners burst into tears as soon as they hit that turn.

We saw shirts noting how far a runner got last year before the bombs went off, and so much determination to finish what was started the year before. We saw men pushing sons in wheelchairs, people running alongside blind runners, people running in memory of others, firefighters, national guard... And something came over me in the midst of screaming out "you got this!!!!" at perfect strangers and waving my cowbell like I was possessed and - I spontaneously burst into tears.

This is humanity. This is what it's all about.

We got to see the last three of our runners - Matt C., Matt R., and Froto Fred - round that corner. Matt R. turning into predictable puddles when he saw us. It was so beautiful.

I raced over to the post-race banquet to congratulation our runners before I had to head to the airport. On my way out of town, I was struck by how many people were wearing the marathon jacket. When we boarded our plane, anyone who ran the race was allowed to board first. Clearly, this whole city revered this race. And after finally watching it myself, I understood why.

Thank you, Boston, for exemplifying resilience and showing love to our team. And thank you, Run Now Relay, for letting me be a part of this incredible journey. Boston Strong. Tennessee Tough.

You can see all the details and social media posts from our relay compiled here.

Below is a beautiful compilation that one of our team members put together of our adventure. A team member who incidentally just completed a hundred mile trail run- I love these crazies! Enjoy.

Run Now Relay: The Final Leg

So yes, someone did pee her pants at one point. It was during a run and she couldn't find a bathroom and one thing lead to another and that's how PeeWee got her name.

We'd all end up with names before the relay was over. Like "Wrong Way EK" for teammate EK who had a knack for always taking the wrong turn. Or "Puddles," our leader Matt R. who kept getting emotional during the journey.

I ended up as "Wedge," for reasons I'll explain later. But for now, let's go back to Jersey.

We wake up and roll out again about 11:30 p.m. As we drive towards the point where we'll get the hand-off of GPSy, Matt R. exclaims "Oh there's a McDonald's, we could get breakfast!"

...and then "Oh yeah, except it's not morning yet...." And the time/space disorientation gets us again.

Our next leg enters New York City - in the middle of the night.

I think everyone was a little nervous about this one. Nikki and I ended up running right next to the vehicle for most of it for safety reasons, at times we were even pulled back in if we came up on a road where the van would need to separate from us. I'm sure people wondered what the heck we were all doing most of the time, although several vehicles in our relay actually had nice people come up to them during the journey to donate money for our cause! 

That was not the case in NYC. Matt R. ended up taking the last several miles of our total leg because the route was too risky for the females. When we finally finished, we ended up in Times Square right before the sun came up. By that time, there was no opportunity for sleep because the entire team was going to attempt to get on Good Morning America.

Because the best time to be on national television is when you are drenched in sweat and haven't slept all night.

Plus it was cold so I was wearing my "I will never be asked out ever in this" running cap...sigh...

We take our place of stalk-age outside the GMA window. 

Our initial goal is to get ourselves and our Run Now Relay signs on air to promote our cause. 

One by one, the hosts come out and some of them actually do chat with us:

And we get really excited and start chattering during the segments, which we can't hear so we don't know what the hosts are discussing on the show inside. We don't know, that is, until one of the staffers asks if we "could keep it down because the hosts are discussing a serial murder case..."

and they can hear us laughing.

Whoops!

In spite of that, we do eventually end up on air:

But that was just the beginning. Sara Haines got in touch with us and said she wanted to do a full feature story on us for the weekend show! So now, most of us were all racing to Central Park to tape the segment while one of our vehicles continued on the relay route.

Below is how the segment turned out --- love it!

We head out again in search for food and sleep. We end up staying in the home of one of the relayer's friends. They did our laundry, made us dinner, and ushered us into their private sauna in the back yard.

Maybe I could get used to this relay life after all. Oh wait - we're running again? But I like it here in this sauna....

We get GPSy somewhere in Connecticut. This would be the last leg for our flight and it ended up just being the two female runners that ran.  Nikki runs her 6 miles, then I get out to run the last 6 miles our flight will do.

In the dark. In the cold. Basically All. Up. Hill.

I'm trucking along around 10:30 p.m. on a fairly untraveled road with our van slightly ahead of me, when all of a sudden a big Waba truck comes up behind us.

Waba (WAH-buh) truck: Me and my southern friend's pet name for large, jacked-up trucks, typically driven in rural areas. Accessories may include giant chrome exhaust pipes, enormous tires, and engines that idle loudly, making a "waba, waba" noise, and which are revved strategically, particularly during mating season or to display the driver's obvious manliness. 

This was no friendly waba driver, however. He slowly drives past us, whips a U-turn, comes back, pulls up right next to me, and starts revving the motor. I anxiously look up towards my van, and he just stays there, behind the van, creeping along. I jog a little faster, picturing some drunk redneck behind the wheel with a shotgun, and I get next to the van and yell "what is this guy doing?!" Froto Fred assures me the van is staying right with me, so I keep going. Finally, the truck starts to pass us yet again, pulling up slowly next to me, and the driver is staring at me. 

And that's when my inner New Jersey mafia member rises up uncontrollably and I raise my hands, shrug my shoulders violently at the driver and just yell "WHAT."

Shortly after that, it occurred to me that it was possible this guy was just trying to donate money, which would have been really awkward... 

He wasn't. He continued to be creepy, but since the van stayed close, I continued on. Then, all of a sudden, the van door opens and out leaps -

The Race Horse. 

He doesn't even wait for the van to stop, he just flies over to jog by my side. He looks around us - picks up a stick - and starts running alongside me, weapon in hand, staring menacingly towards the truck, daring it to do anything.

(Meanwhile, the guys in the van joked, "there goes Captain America," referring to Johnny's uncanny ability to do pretty much anything heroic, without even trying. Later, as we retold the story to another relayer, he added "Johnny was probably fastening that stick into a spear with his abs!" Ah, good-natured jealousy.... Boys are fun...)

The truck finally drove off, and while the whole thing rattled me (especially when not too far down the road, my van stopped at a gas station and I continued down the dark road alone, picturing Waba man behind every pair of headlights that approached me), it was worth it just to say:

I. Ran. With the Race Horse.

(So what if my "running" pace is more like his walking pace. If he broke an ankle.)

I finish my last mile, and the van pulls over and some of the team hops out to congratulate me and just  take in the fact that our flight had finished it's race. I get back in and Matt R. muses "you know, this whole trip, everyone has been so nice to all of us, stopping to give donations and stuff -- and Dana gets the stalker."

He wasn't surprised. 

Next post: BOSTON.

Run Now Relay: Get Your Big Boy Pants On And Run

By this point, I think our team was finished with our leg and looking for our accommodations somewhere in New Jersey.

"Accommodations" for this journey ranged everywhere from actual hotels to the floor of a church to the bunk beds inside the giant transfer trailer truck that traveled almost the entire time with us and served as our Command Center. (I say almost the entire time because the truck ended up breaking down a few different places and it took a week for it to finally make it back to Tennessee. #dedication)

And it didn't matter a whole lot where you were sleeping anyway because you would likely only have about 4 hours to do so before rolling out again. There was many times our members would check in and check out of a hotel the same day, sometimes passing their keys off to the flights that came in behind them.

(But the hotels' staff were so awesome and many times they'd clean the room in between flights and serve us food even at our odd hours. I love nice people!)

But back to the group messages.

Since the relay is vehicles leap frogging each other, you really didn't even see a lot of the teams in person. We'd see group messages like this:

Or you'd see what other teammates posted on Facebook or see them on some news station. We'd be in Jersey and see photos from another flight in Philly, or we'd be trying to sleep while the group texts would go off between the flights out on the route. It was a constant, confusing churn of Relayers all over the East Coast. You'd see simultaneous posts from various flights like these:

And occasionally you'd get real-time videos of running conditions or sarcastic remarks (all in good fun) from runners who ended up running in sleet, or right next to semi-trucks:

Or both, like Corey:

"Oh look! There goes one now! What an inspiration!"

 (I wish I could post the whole video but hopefully you get the gist from the GIF above.This was Corey musing about how "inspirational" it was for him to be running in the middle of the night in freezing temps on a busy highway with no shoulder. Here you see him turn his head around just in time to witness yet another semi nearly mowing him down.)

And just when Corey thought he'd seen it all....he ended up running DOWN THE MIDDLE OF THE JERSEY TURNPIKE. Below is part of his video which shows you his position in the middle of raging traffic, while reminding us all "Safety first guys!" Of course we think it's hilarious...you know, now that we know he didn't perish....

 

At some point, one of the vehicles broke down right as their runner was being questioned by police as to why they were trying to run on an interstate. That runner's cell phone battery died right at that exact moment, and I'm not even sure how they ended up rescuing him. Meanwhile, other flights were planning where they'd eat lunch....

We'd get messages about runners switching vans, or progress updates on where the iPad was that our van passed around. (We borrowed it from the flight before us and the only way to get it back to them was to pass it to the next flight, who would pass it to the next, until the thing made it's way all the way back around. And it worked. Just another crazy part of the logistical adventure this was!)

At some point Matt R. had posted something about being sleep deprived because he slept on a tiny couch or something so Matt C. in another flight decided to mock him for whining. The problem was, it was the middle of the night and Matt C.'s flight was trying to sleep, so the resulting "message" ended up being a text of a video of Matt C.'s voice whispering in pitch black and all I can remember hearing was him telling Matt R. to:

"Get your big boy pants on and run!"

Which is really what we all had to tell ourselves at some point or another.

Whether it was temps: 

I snapped this in Delaware, but some of the team had to run in 80 degrees as well

Lack of sleep:

Another ridiculous time I had to set my alarm for

dreaded night runs:

Or run-ins with the police:

This team definitely had it's share of obstacles that required Big Boy Pants to overcome.

It was also during this disorienting journey that I came to realize why celebrities start using cocaine...

On top of all the route tracking, running, and sleep/food off-scheduleness, the team was constantly churning out media interviews to get the word out as much as possible about our cause. So you'd get done with a sweaty run, or just wake up from a 2 hour night's sleep, to find a group message asking who was able to run downstairs or run downtown to be interviewed. I can't imagine what it's like for famous rock stars who live that kind of schedule every day, but I can say I'm not surprised that they start using hard drugs to stay awake. Wow.

So back to us in New Jersey. After finding our hotel, we do a quick interview with a local channel -

My first slow -motion run on television. Eat your heart out, Baywatch.

Then get ready for a little sleep. But I had been trying to get another shirt since mine were sweaty by then, and the shirts were all in the "Command Center" (our tractor trailer) which I'd yet to see. Finally the truck gets to our hotel and we are in the same place at the same time, so I take the opportunity to get the shirt. Here's my first view of this thing:

Looks real friendly in the dark, abandoned parking lot, right?

I open the door and start to climb my way into the trailer right when the driver - who I'd never met - comes up behind me.

And that's when I peed my pants.

Just kidding! But it did scare me, and probably him too.

But someone else on the team did pee her pants, which earned her the nickname "PeeWee." Find out why I was nearly nicknamed "Stalker Bait" in the next post...

Run Now Relay: What day is it and where am I?

I'm back!
Long story short, the thing that I found out about in between running down the National Mall with the Relay team Wednesday afternoon, and jumping into one of their vans that evening was: a giant tumor in my lower abdomen.

Awesome. I'm about to go on a crazy, physically challenging adventure, and this doctor is telling me I'm basically 5 months pregnant with a muscle mass. Never a dull moment!

I didn't tell the relay folks the whole story so they had no idea what was going on, but I did make sure I was cleared to run and the doctors and nurses even rushed around in order to get me out the door in time to leave with my "flight" because they thought the relay sounded awesome. But they did inform me I'd need surgery when I got back. (really? but doesn't everyone want to go around 5 months pregnant all the time?) 

That surgery is now complete and praise the Lord, there were no complications and the tumor was benign (and I now have an awesome scar that I'm totally going to tell people came from a prison knife fight). But that's another story.

Back to the Relay. We left off with Race Horse getting ready to run. But what I forgot to mention was that right before that, as we were leaving Baltimore at three in the morning, we stop by a gas station where there is a ...unique... group of people inside. 

Race Horse is a quiet, extremely kind and earnest person, so he is unnassumedly looking for food in the mini mart when he is complimented on his "outfit" by one of the male members of the group who apparently really appreciates lycra running gear. I imagine Race Horse turned red when he politely informed the guy that he was simply going for a run, not that he normally walks around in skin-tight "outifts" at 3:00a.m. in the inner city.  

Guys hit on in the van: 1
Girls: 0

Back to the road. Right as Johnny got GPSy, our driver tells me "you are about to see something amazing..." And we all stop and watch in awe as The Race Horse easily glided away from us. 

It really is beautiful to watch. It's like he's sprinting, but he holds the pace for 26 miles, looking effortless. We'd call him during runs to check in and he sounded like he was sitting on a couch somewhere, just hanging out.

You'd totally hate him if he wasn't so darn nice.

So we successfully launched the first runner of our flight that day, after a crazy day prior, and little sleep. From then on, the whole journey felt very similar to Ragnar: disorienting. You never know who's running, which van's next, how much time you have before you need to run, what state you are in, what time it is, what meal you should be eating, etc. 

At some point during that day, the entire relay team gets a group text from Matt C. that simply says, "anyone know what day it is?"

And we all laughed in my van...but then realized we didn't actually know. And I had only been with them 24 hours.

It was even crazier for those in the van who were following the map and the runners. 

Remember, no one had seen the course in person, only maps and GPS images. So Matt R. in our van was constantly staying up with when our van needed to get GPSy, as well as what route we needed to be driving. He joked that he was on the phone with Duane, the leader of the flight in front of us, more than he was his wife. An admission that was made evident one night when Matt received a late night text from Duane that ended with "Miss you. Love you."

(Turns out, the text was actually from Matt's wife but it took Matt a very confused second to realize that.)

All in all, we had: regular texting and phone calls; flight group-texts - a group set up on our phones of only those in our vehicle; a giant group text for everyone in the relay; and then everyone's social media posts, because the buzz around this thing was being driven by that.

Talk about sensory overload. But it was often very humorous overload.

Each vehicle developed their own group personalities, and we also had some strong individual personalities, which all resulted in hilarious, sleep-deprived messages. Former Green Beret Robert began taking selfies with anyone who fell asleep in his van, in what he termed as photos from "The 'Z' Monster":

And our driver, Fred, was doing Selfies before Selfie was a word. But he called them Frotos (Fred Photo) and it morphed into videos for "WFROTO," the fake Froto news station. I ended up in one WFROTO live report when Fred and I ran a few miles together, while singing "The Battle of New Orleans" in between breaths, because why wouldn't you do that during a run?

I wish I could figure out how to post the whole video. It was special.

He occasionally did FROTO reports while driving, nearly running over the Race Horse, Leader Matt, and myself. Eh, just adding to the adventure.

Here's Fred wearing not one, but two pairs of glasses, and his up-turned hat, while driving and checking his phone. Welcome to our van.

That WFROTO report above documented my very first leg with the team. I honestly can't even remember what state we were in by that time, but I do remember getting my first ever debilitating calf cramp.

UGH. MURPHY'S LAW WHYYYYYYYYYYYY.

I had to jump back in the van for a bit before jumping back out to try to hobble to the end of my 6 mile leg. I had 12 hours to get this thing fixed before my next leg. By the time we stopped to eat, I could barely walk. This is starting out so well!

We finally turned GPSy over to the next flight, but not before they saw Nikki - the other female runner in my van - being chased towards them by what they believed was a homeless man.

It was Fred again. 

Fred shown here in his running get-up, complete with the dead squirrel he PICKED UP along the way...

Have I mentioned I love these people? More adventures in the next post. 

The Run Now Relay: D.C. to Baltimore

Back to The Race Horse.

The Race Horse's actual name is Johnny. AKA "Johnny Marathon." He ran a marathon a day for 6 days, BEFORE he ran Boston in less than half the time it took me to finish my marathon. He literally ran across the entire state of Delaware for us. He is a machine.

So when I started to pre-apologize for being slow when I joined my van, the driver waves me off with "we've got a horse in here so fast, that it won't make a difference how slow you are."

And it turns out, I didn't have to run too far, either, thanks to the Race Horse. If you do math better than I do, you'll figure out that if each flight needs to complete 30 miles a leg, and Johnny runs 26 miles a leg -- there are not many miles left for the other 4 runners in our van.

Granted, different flights started shuffling mileage around to spare anyone needing a rest, so I did end up being able to contribute miles along the route. But not doing anything too crazy was fine with me, because the day we left, I found out I had a 4-6 pound benign tumor in my abdomen that would need to be taken care of fairly quickly. Perfect timing! Thankfully, I was still cleared to run, but I felt sluggish and slower than ever. I was basically 6 months pregnant, in the words of my doctor. Excellent timing for an endurance challenge! 

But I'm getting ahead of myself again. Let's start in D.C. 

The "flights" rolled in one by one to join the big group "fun run" I organized with local running groups and the local Tennessee State Society. Me and the relay runners that I knew were all bouncing around excitedly, as they told me a little of the trip thus far. We do the fun run, take some photos in front of the Capitol, then the runner who had the next leg (Former Green Beret Robert from my Ragnar) took off to continue our trek to Boston.

Since my van didn't have legs for several hours, they took off in search of food, while I:

went to get medical tests done.

Exactly what you want to do right before joining a crazy road trip with lots of running involved!

So yeah, I was definitely having issues but like I said - I was cleared for running. In fact, my doctors were all rooting for my trip so they scurried around to get me all fixed up in time to jump in my van as it drove past my house. I was told "yeah, we'll need to schedule surgery when you get back..." as I raced out of the doctor's and back home to grab my things, texting ETAs the whole time to Matt who had no idea what was going on. All he knew was that our van needed to head north, with or without me in it.

I raced out of my apartment and literally stood on the corner of the street, bags in tow, fleece sleeping bag unfurled and thrown over my shoulder like I was Linus from Charlie Brown on my way to summer camp. I might as well have been sucking my thumb when my flight pulled up and whisked me away to Baltimore, where our hotel was awaiting us.

This was about 5:30p.m.

Yes. We were going to sleep. Because the relay team was already on the erratic schedule of "if there's a bed, we should sleep, because who knows when we can do that again." So I had to force my body to jump into that rhythm as well, because I was now officially one of the runners on the route.

How did we have a route? An engineer on the team had painstakingly mapped it. From Cleveland, Tennessee all the way to the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Many of the runners had never even seen some of the cities we'd go through. 

Which made me nervous. Having lived in D.C., I know there are parts of large cities where some emergency response folks won't even go. And you don't know that info unless you live there. So not that I didn't have faith in the planners, but I was a bit nervous about this team running day and night through Baltimore, Philly, New York... 

Not to mention traffic. Our hope was that the vehicles could stay right with the runner, but if you've ever been on a major highway on the east coast, or on one-way streets in suburbia, you know that can't always happen.

We ended up having runners on the Jersey Turnpike, people. But more on that later.

As my van leaves DC, we drive up to a police scene right off the bat. We see cops standing around a man down on the ground, hand behind his back. As Matt starts to take a photo, one of the police officers notices us and starts to lift his arms. Just as I think he's going to gesture to Matt to put the camera away, he puts his arms up in a "yeah, I'm cuffing a perpetrator on the ground, woot woot!" pose. Welcome to Maryland!



We arrive at a hotel in Baltimore and I set my alarm for this: 

Yep, I'm officially on the route for sure.  

I wake up, shower (since I wasn't able to between the fun run, the doctor, and jumping in the van) and I go to dry my hair:

and the hotel hairdryer explodes in my hands.

Like, starts smoking, looks like it's on the edge of spewing a fireball into my face, kind of explosion. 

RIP, thing that tried to singe my hair.

Well, looks like Murphy's Law jumped into my luggage! This will be fun, van teammates!

We all meet in the lobby and throw our stuff back in the van, and get ready to get "Gypsy"

GPSy is our GPS. She is tracking the team's progress for those following along back home, though occasionally she gets dropped, taken by the wrong people (which is why my boss texted me at one point and asked if we were inside an IKEA....), or killed, like when the team's first GPS was dropped to the point of no return, earning one of our teammates their nickname "Assassin." (My nickname was nearly "Stalker Bait," and ended up being "Wedge." Both of which, I'll explain later....)

So GPSy was with the flight before us -- Flight 2, the "Blue Boomerangs." I never learned where they got that name, but they were considered the "Middle Schoolers" on the trip because they were so bubbly and usually were yelling and blaring music whenever they rolled up. I heart them.

The flights stay in order, so we were always right after the Boomerangs and right before flight 4, the Green Machine. (each flight had a number and a color. We were the Mellow Yellow Submarines.) 

The Green Machine held my friend Matt C. who nearly made my nickname "Hoss," for the sole reason that when he called a guy that, I informed him that he should never refer to me -or any female ever - that way. So of course he immediately started referring to me that way.

Back to the road. We met up with Flight 2 around 3:00am-

And made the hand-off of GPSy to The Race Horse.

The team doing a quick interview with our travelling
documentary team, as The Race Horse prepares in the background

More in the next post.

"