This was my first time ever competing in a race.It was such a blast!!! My first leg started in St. Helens. It was just under 6 miles long and labeled "Very Hard" because it had so many hills. I was the first one in my van to start us off. I was fortunate to be in Van 2 so we didn't start the race until around 1:00pm on Friday. Our other van started around 3:30am! So I was well rested, ate a great breakfast and was ready to go. I took off! My adrenaline was so high. We also would count how many "kills" we had (which is people you pass) and I got 8! Every person I saw in the distance made me eager to pass them. I finished with an average time of 12 mins and 24 secs a mile!!! I was so stoke and exhausted! While I trained the whole year coming up to the race I could never be faster then a 14 minute mile. This was so exciting for me. When my van finished all our legs we drove to where I would start off again when Van 1 finished. We arrived there and we all settled in to get some rest sometime before 10pm. Now we were laying in the ground on a tarp just in a sleeping bag. All the other races were also laid out and trying to rest too. So everywhere you looked you saw people trying to sleep. Now when we talked about sleeping under the stars, it sounding great! It was so uncomfortable!! I did not get a wink of sleep! I was only laying down for 2 hrs when another team comes walking in! I wasn't expecting anyone for like 5 hours! We could not get a hold of Van 1 and I was worried our team was coming a lot faster to pass off the baton. So needless to say I was overstimulated, excited, and anxious to go! After all that anticipation I didn't finally get to walk until 3:30am. This one was only a 4 mile moderate one. It was gradually down hill and I was flying! My average mile time for this leg was 11 mins and 12 secs!!! YEAH! It was very dark and kind of spooky because there would be times where no body was around me. Just me in the dark wearing flashing lights. When we finished off we made it to seaside around 11:00am. The energy there was so amazing! It was such a beautiful day! I was so exhausted and SO tired! We took lots of pictures, and ate a huge meal at Pig N Pancake. My team was so amazing! I had such a fun time with them. Out of the women's teams we got 71 out of 137 teams. Out of all the teams and divisions we got 202nd out of 407 teams. I will definitely be doing this again next year.
