Perhaps this blog entry has been put off for so long because it is physically impossible to describe all the insanity that occurred at The Relay for Organ Donation, or as it is commonly known: "How I Paid Money to Become Road Kill." (Actually, everyone just calls it "The Relay," but they should look into that possible name change.)
So as you might have read in my column on the event last weekend, this blog entered the 199-mile relay race from Calistoga to Santa Cruz with a team from Fresno that called itself, "Slow ... The New Fast!"
Clever name, though there were many clever names ...
"Literally Running" (The IIndia Literacy Project)
"Cheaper Than Therapy"
"Sole Sisters"
"Sponge Bob No Chance"
"We Got The Runs!"
"Short Shorts Drive Us Nuts"
"Running Noses" (A bunch of Stanford University ear-schnaz-and-throat specialists)
"Just Watering Your Flowers, Ma'am"
And my personal favorite, mostly because it's a great visual, although I have no idea how it relates to running ... "Fat Kids Always Win At Seesaw"
We began at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday, May 5. Here's a shot of the starting line:
For you non-Californians, Calistoga is way north of San Francisco and Santa Cruz is way south of San Francisco. Obviously, all 200-plus teams couldn't start at the same time or it would be mass hysteria, Iraqi politics, traffic gridlock, dogs and cats living together. So the slowest teams start at 7 a.m., and then a new set of teams every half hour until 3 p.m.
Each team has two vans with six runners each. I was Runner #4 in Van 1, which had legs 1-6, then we showered at a church in Napa, then went to eat while Van 2's runners ran legs 7-12. My first leg wasn't too awful, 7.4 miles, slightly uphill, although that was near midday and it felt like a 200-foot child was holding a giant magnifying glass over me. Other than that, it was quite pleasant.
The second van meeting point was at the Marin French Cheese Company, a farm outside of Petaluma, where I wrote my Sunday column, and caught a brief nap in a sleeping bag on the ground, which felt like the biggest pillow-top bed in the universe. The problem was, I had to describe an event that was barely one-third finished. The danger was yet to come... (Translation: There will be another blog entry to follow this one.)
Here's a random picture that pretty much sums up everyone's bathroom situation:
