S2S and a Lotta BS

I don't really know how to even start this post. I just went through one of the craziest, most wonderful, and most awful experiences of my adult life this weekend. I participated in the 185 mile Spokane to Sandpoint relay race.

Back in May after my 1/2 marathon I thought it would be a good idea if I signed up for another race to motivate myself to keep running. A friend from work asked me to be on her team for this relay and I was like you know what? I know enough crazy ladies to form my own running team and I'm going to do that. So I did that.

Thursday night we met to decorate the vans. As team captain I also took this opportunity to begin mothering my team. I made them stand in the order they'd be running in, wearing a wig of their choosing, and listen to me talk through the details of each person's run and all the van exchanges and when we'd be sleeping and when we'd be showering. (And I knew these details because I did some superstar math in Excel, which they made fun of, but ended up loving in the end.) They embraced me as their Team Mother and let me continue with my role throughout the weekend - my van lovingly named me their Van Mom. You may think I'm joking when I say it warmed my heart but I'm not and it did.Below is all 12 of us at 5:30 in the morning at the top of Mt. Spokane. There was a wig contest for the first runner so to show our support for Lady Godivia we all wore wigs to send her off.
This is my van with our trademark whale on top and a mannequin with a pink wig wood glued to his head. The whale stayed with us all 32 hours, the mannequin turned out to be super heavy so we ditched him after the van judging was over.

Our amazing Lady Godiva running the first leg of the relay.

Next up was a costume contest. Our runner Shannon choose to run in her actual wedding dress. We helped her tie the tulle in knots so she wouldn't trip and off she went. Her mom freaked a little when she heard what she was doing but her Van Mom didn't. Her Van Mom couldn't have been prouder of her little girl.

Another shot of our bride, this time with her sister (we'll call her the maid of honor) running after her shouting words of wisdom and encouragement.

Next up was runner 3 and sadly there was no contest for #3 to participate in. All Miss Olivia had to look forward to was a long 7 mile run with a hill and a couple of turns and some beautiful landscape (that her sister described to her through the megaphone while running next to her).
After Olivia's run my pictures get a little dicey. There's really no evidence from here on out that any running took place. I assure you that it did though.

After the 6 girls in our van finished we swung by Starbucks and Subway and headed to our shower stop. Our shower stop happened to be at Lady Godiva's house and she had a pool so we swam and pretended that we were just over for a swim and we didn't have to get back in the van and go do what we just did 2 more times.

But thankfully we remembered that we like doing hard things and this was going to be a really hard thing to do so we just embraced it.

After a quick stop at Rite Aid for batteries for our new teammate, Mitch the Megaphone (where we also picked up some mini bottles of wine for the next day's breakfast) we were headed to Mirabeau Park where the last runner from Van 2 would be finishing up and passing the baton back to our van.
Again things are dicey picture wise. We all ran again and somehow ended in Coeur d'Alene. We supported our runners not by offering them cold water or anything helpful physically, but by sticking with them whenever possible and talking at them through the megaphone about what good runners they were. They were good runners and we offered them support by telling them that over and over.

We also offered our flavor of support to every runner we saw. We learned their names whenever possible and shouted out how proud we were of them every chance we got. When we couldn't catch names we just said 'Hey blue shorts, you're a fast runner. We love that you're fast and we're proud of you but if you wouldn't mind letting our girl Marie catch up and pass you we'd think you were nice too.' People laughed and I like to think it's that laughter that carried them through their super hard runs in the 90 degree Spokane heat and later through the middle of the night runs in Northern Idaho.

On a side note today has been weird. Social situations have been hard to blend back in to. I was at my in-laws and they had a friend over who was learning how to clean a fish. He decided that I should learn to. Instead of learning with him I told him I'd support him by taking pictures of him learning and that's how I would help him through the experience. He looked at me like a crazy person and went ahead and cleaned the fish. I just kept thinking about how I could have supported him better had I had Mitch with me. I could have said 'you're a good fish cleaner' and he would have smiled and kept cleaning and that would have made us both feel good.

This is me running. I made the girls take a picture of me so I would remember this experience was real and not a weird dream.

So now our van has run twice and it's evening time so we're off to find some dinner and try to catch some sleep on the hard ground at Silverwood while we wait for Van 2 to do their runs. We got to Silverwood and I couldn't sleep a wink. As Van Mom I had the weight to making everything work and if I slept through the phone call that said they were getting close we wouldn't be ready at the exchange and I would have let them down. Plus the ground was super hard and Angie was snoring next to me and people were coming and going and packing up all around me and I couldn't tune it out.

So Van 2 got done around 1:30 a.m. and 9 of the 12 of us road Tremors (the scariest roller coaster in the world, never ride it please!). Then it was our van's turn to run again. At this point we've been up since like 3:30, we've run twice, we've eaten weird food, and running along the rural roads of Northern Idaho sounds like a bad idea. 5 of the 6 of us loved it though and no one got attacked by a bear or the KKK so we were all still basically happy when it was over. All except Van Mom.

Van Mom found that last run to be the hardest thing she's ever done. Running is already hard and to do it without sleep or proper pooping facilities is difficult. I had to dig deep and I didn't come up with what I should have. Instead I just shouted at my van "I don't want to be a runner, I just want to be a fat girl".

Thankfully they wouldn't let me quit. Instead they recorded my motto on the megaphone and played it back to me pretty much nonstop for my 6 mile run. I wouldn't have made it without those wonderful ladies.

Shannon and Mitch

Shelby with Shannon, Olivia and Mitch rooting her on.

The Team.

There were 77 teams in the race and we placed 1st. Not 1st in time, in time we were DEAD LAST (true). We won the team spirit award though which is only given to 1 team. By winning it we get $300 off next year's registration. The team that won for time got $-0- off next year's registration so who do you think they want back next year? Exactly.

At the end of the day I hugged my new 11 best girlfriends and told them it's been fun but I'm just not a runner, I'm a fat girl. It just comes more naturally to me. Ice cream loves me and I love it and I don't want to fight with it any longer.

After sleeping for 12 hours last night though I'm almost back to my normal self and I'm pretty sure that running is the way to the good life (to quote One Republic) and this gonna be a good life and I should keep doing hard things. If I don't the ice cream will take over and it won't be pretty and I'll have to buy new clothes and I'll probably have to make a spreadsheet to figure out how to do that.

Hear that S2S'ers? Mom's back. Turns out she's not a quitter afterall. Next year she's going to find a better way to micromanage both vans though because mom's can have more than 5 kids if they want. They can have 11 and still be good moms to all 11 of them and I'm going to figure that out by next August. Get excited!