Market to Market 86-Mile Relay

On Saturday, October 11th, I ran an 86-mile relay from Omaha's Downtown "Old Market," to Lincoln's Downtown "Haymarket Square," which lies across the street from the Nebraska Cornhuskers football stadium. It was the first year for this race, and it was awesome!

The race started at 7:00 am, and there were 150 different teams running. Each team had 6, 7, or 8 runners. There were 8 members on my team, 6 boys and 2 girls, and we each had to run in order from Runner 1 to Runner 8, doing three legs each. Also, each leg we ran was a different length; mine were 3.23 miles, 4.63 miles, and 4.10 miles, totaling 12 miles. Each person on the team had pretty much the same mileage, overall. It wouldn't have been so hard, but try running as fast as you can for 3.23 miles, and then running again about an hour or so later, and just as hard as before, and then doing it again! It was tough!

Our team finished first, with an overall time of 8 hours 40 minutes. That is a 6:03 average pace. Again, we started at 7:00 am, and finished at 3:40 pm. I can't believe we did it! We were extremely exhausted, but it was so, so much fun. And because we won overall, we get a free entry into next year's race.

I am putting a link on here for you all to see, courtesy of one of the guys on my team. He's a great photographer. He captured some great moments. See for yourself.

Race

They will be having this relay every year, and I have ABSOLUTELY no complaints. This was the most organized race I’ve ever been a part of, seriously, and this was only the first year! Volunteers to the MAX. There were volunteers along the course to make sure you didn’t turn down the wrong road. Everyone should make it to this event some year. It’s great.

Lastly, I was able to get the time for my splits, but the first leg is not accurate. I forgot to start my garmin, so I ran 0.22 miles before I remembered to turn it on. So what I do have is this:

Stage 3 – 3.01 miles (I actually ran 3.23 miles) in 19:46, 6:35 pace, mostly neighborhood/asphalt
Stage 11 – 4.76 miles in 31:55, 6:43 pace, went from loose gravel, to dirt, to limestone trail, to sidewalk, and finally to asphalt
Stage 19 – 4.19 miles in 27:35, 6:35 pace, limestone trail

If you check out these stages on the website I listed, you’ll see that the first two legs were listed as moderate/hard. They WERE. They were extremely hilly, and they were both straight into the wind, which was blowing a good 20 miles an hour. The day started out windy and about 50 degrees, and at 2:30 pm or so, when I ran my last leg, it was still windy and had reached 75 degrees.

This was a great event, and the post-race shindig, as they called it, was excellent, as well. I would recommend this race to anyone who loves to give something their complete and total all. It was a long day (woke up at 4:00 am and went to bed at 12:30 am), but it was worth it. Definitely a great time.