Ragner Wasatch Back Relay

I (Brent) ran with a team in the Ragner Wasatch Back relay race this last Friday and Saturday. It was a great experience even though I'm sore! For those who don't know what the Wasatch Back Relay is I'll explain. It is a race that is ran every year. It starts in Logan and ends in Park City. This year there were about 800 teams, over 7000 runners running in the race. Most teams are made up of 12 runners, there are some crazy teams that have only 6 runners. Each runner runs 3 legs of the race. We split the team up into two groups and the first group starts in Logan and each runner in that group runs their first leg. The second group waits at the exchange at the end of the 6th runners first leg. Then the second group does their first legs and this continues until you reach the finish line. I was runner 11 of the 12 runners on my team. I was in van #2 so we meet van #1 in .

My first leg was up Snow Basin from Pineview Reservoir around 4:00 PM on Friday. Here is a map of my first leg of the race.

Here I am at the beginning of my of my first leg.

There I go up the mountain!

and up...

and up... that is Eric, he is my old team lead from work, giving me some water. It was a hot day.

and up... this is the view behind me as I run up the mountain.

But the view at the top was amazing and made the run all worth it.
In the picture is Me, Steve (my first team lead from work), Kate (Eric's wife), Eric, and Angie (Eric's cousin). The other runner not in the picture

I felt pretty good after that run. My second run was in the early morning around Rock Port. I didn't get any pictures during this leg because it was dark. I was a nice run around Rock Port. It wasn't to cold and it was relatively level compared to my first run. I started my run around 4:00 am. I hadn't slept during the night because I was driving the van and helping other runners out during the night. It started to get light by the end of my run. About half way around Rock Port I could see the water in the reservoir. Here is a map of that leg of the race.

My final leg was a down hill run. Down Guardsman's pass into Deer Valley. This was my hardest leg of the race. Between the second and third run we went to a hotel in Coalville and showered, ate and slept for a few hours. I think I slept one hour before the alarms went off and we had to jump in the van again and meet the first van at the last van exchange.

This is me at the start of my last run. It was really cool because we had climbed to the top of a mountain and the clouds had settled on the top of the mountain. You can kind of see it in the first picture but just to the right of me was a drop off that you couldn't see over the edge because the cloud was think. Now we were working our way down the mountain.

This was a level part of my run.

This is me kissing the "One Mile to Go" sign they put at the end of each leg of the race. I knew this was the mile of my total 18.4 miles I ran during this race.

This is our team crossing the finish line. While the last runner is running the rest of the team waits for that runner at the last 100 or so yards and we all ran across the finish line together. We ran the whole 188 miles in just under 34 hours.

Here I am at the finish line. The gave all the runners metals just for running the race.

Close up of the metal they gave us.

The race was an amazing experience and I would like to do it again sometime. It was a great experience and achievement to be able to run in the race. I would invite anyone to run the Wasatch Back Relay if given the chance. It is a a lot of fun!