Hood to Coast Relay

Currently I am stalking following 4 teams that are participating in the HTC in just a few days. Two teams are from my diet website of choice (sparkpeople.com) and two are lucky lady bloggers that were chosen to run for my sports beverage of choice (nuun.com).

It's really very interesting to me how things have almost come full circle. My desire to run comes from my desire to compete. Well, compete is bit over kill. I want to race, at least I want to participate in races. Finishing will always be my first goal. 

Earlier this year I took my exercising to a new level. I went from walking to running to 5k training. Why? Because I had no desire to actually hit the 180 mark I was headed for. Knowing that it would be much easier to motivate myself if I actually had a goal (other than weight because that has never been enough somehow) I started researching races. Of course this started with local 5ks. They are doable for obvious reasons. 

It seems a big trend this year is the dirty obstacle course races. Luckily one of the bigger ones was coming close to me. I was not ready and did not do it. But it pushed me in the right direction to find other races. The most notable one being the HTC Relay. 

I had heard of marathons and ultra marathons before, but never a relay. I watched what videos I could find on youtube and just fell in love with the idea. It really seems like a damn good time. Shortly after, I found the Nuun contest for a lady blogger team. And as soon as the teams were announced, I started following the team mates. I figure that is as close as I could get. 

Then someone on SP put in a request for Ghost runners. A ghost runner is someone that is not participating in the actual race, but will run the same distance at the same time as one of the team members. It's a virtual team mate. WOW. This was so for me! 

So Friday morning at 10:30 my time, I will be running 5.64 miles with my Coastie team mate for Leg 1 and again at 8:30 that night for 4.18 leg 13!

Now I realize this is more of a semi-circle. But it feels like a step in the right direction to get me to complete my goal of one day being on a team for this race.

Good Luck to everyone running!