We survived the race!

We survived the torturous and somehow enjoyable Bourbon Chase yet again. This race is a 200 mile 12 person team race which took us 31 hours to complete. This was my second year doing the race and both times I said I hated it while running and yet I am already forgetting the negative parts of the race and missing all of my team mates, sleeping in the van and training at 6:00 AM most mornings. What is wrong with me? Here is a map of the race. It is crazy to think we all ran this far.

Here is a picture of most of our team before van 2 took off at the Maker's Mark exchange point.

Most teams rent 15 passenger vans which allow more space to sleep. This picture was taken at an exchange point so the vans are parked to pick up or drop a runner.

So this is how it works, each runner has a number 1-12. You rotate through 3 rounds of runs or legs each. When runner one finishes they pass off to runner two and so on. Here is a picture or Pipes' passing off to Eddie.

Then Eddie passed off to me. This was my first run of the race.

Some runners run so fast that bugs stick to their face, see Russell below.

Then your next run is sometime in the middle of the night. You are required to wear a reflective vest, a headlamp and a flashing light during your night run. There were fog warnings on our night runs and some runners said they could hardly see 5 feet in front of them. My night run wasn't terrible and it was mostly downhill which was also better than some of the others. This picture was taken at an exchange point.

After running through the night, we tried to catch a couple of hours of sleep so we could wake up and run one last leg. Here is Brad getting ready to run 6 miles on his last leg of the race.

Brad comes in to exchange with Lisa, our last runner before we cross the finish line in downtown Lexington.

Along the last runs we saw some of the most beautiful parts of the Lexington countryside. It made my 13 miles and 3 hours of sleep worth it all.

Brad and I are happy to be done and have agreed it was our last time. We will see if we get conned into it yet again in the future.

I wouldn't have been able to do this without the support of Lisa! You are the best!! We complained together while also keeping one another positive throughout the journey.

Here is our entire team together at the finish.

The next morning we had everyone over for Owen's first birthday party. That blog will be coming soon!

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