Run, Forrest, Run!

Kristina, my wife, likes to run races. She doesn't necessarily enjoy running, but she likes races (and the shirts you get for participating). I think she's a little disturbed. She talked me into running a 5k once. Once. It wasn't a horrible experience, I'll give you that, but it's not one that I would say I enjoyed. I did get a long-sleeved T out of the deal, so that's pretty cool, I guess.

A few months ago, she got the idea into her head to run the Wasatch Back Relay, a race sponsored by the renowned Ragnar Race Series. Yeah, I've never heard of them, either. Apparently Ragnar does several of these types of races throughout the year to help people punish themselves. I think they're secretly run by Opus Dei (this is a reference to The Da Vinci Code -- so if you haven't seen the movie or read the book, you might not get it).

Anyway, Kristina put together a team of 12 runners to run a relay race from Logan, Utah to Park City, Utah. I'll save you the trouble of looking it up on MapQuest: it's 178 miles. Each of the 12 runners take 3 legs over two days. Wait... that sentence looks a little weird. Let's try again. Each runner runs 3 different sections of the race, and the race takes place over two days in June. Yes, they run through the night. People think this is fun. People are sick.

I have been recruited to drive one of the support vehicles for Kristina's team. I'm actually pretty excited to be a driver. I've seen pictures of the race course from the Ragnar Web site, and it looks very pretty. Maybe I'll have to bring a camera and take some pictures. I just hope the vehicle I drive has good A/C. I don't want to be stuck in a large van with a bunch of smelly runners.

So Kristina has been doing a little bit of training to get ready for the race. She's been going to our local gym to run and to take some spinning classes to build up her endurance and increase her speed. This last weekend she ran a 5k that was sponsored by our local junior high school. Proceeds went to Primary Children Medical Center, so that's good. Anyway, she ran this race and did pretty good. In fact she actually got a medal. I should have taken a picture of it to post on my blog. That would have been cool of me. Probably I'll have to do that sometime. Here's a link to the results of the race: http://www.lehijrhigh5k.blogspot.com. As a side note, the overall race winner is a friend of mine from high school. He's also on Kristina's Wasatch Back team. Apparently he's pretty speedy.

So way to go, Kristina! Way to win a medal in a race. I think that's really cool.