Wild West Relay Report: Getting There

It all started a couple months ago when Kristin at ChasRunner posted on her blog about the Wild West Relay she had signed up for. I commented that I had wished I had signed up when I saw people posting about it on their blogs. She responded back that they had a teammate back out and had an opening, and that I SHOULD DO IT!

Now if any of you know me in real life, you know that going on a trip to Colorado with literally 11 strangers is out of my comfort zone. I'm sure Kristin can attest to that in the 1,200 emails I sent her with a gazillion ?s and me changing my mind about going at least a dozen times (a dangerous dozen times, ha!) Finally, I signed up for good and didn't look back.

I flew out of the Sioux Falls airport around noon on Thursday and was somehow put aboard the geriatric flight. Seriously, I was the only person on board who did not have to use a cane/walker/wheelchair to get on or off the plane. Must be on their way to the Denver old people convention, right? Sweet.

Once I landed I knew that Cynthia at AMBER had already landed and was at our rental car place. After going up and down countless escalators, I finally found my bag. Then after circling where I thought I should exit at least another hundred times, I finally figured out where I was going. The shuttle driver almost got me to my puke threshold on the way to the car rental place, so 5 stars go to him. This immediately reminded me that I should've packed Dramamine for the trip. Whoops!

I finally made it to the car rental place to see beautiful Cynthia waiting for me!!! :) We inhaled my pretzel then decided to head to the airport to pick up another of our teammates. But first we had to lose our rental slip, park the wrong way in a shuttle-only parking spot, and giggle like school girls.

We took turns calling our next teammate, Amanda at Run to Finish to see if she had landed and got yelled at numerous times by the "cop" patrolling the area. After finally realizing she was on the OTHER side of the airport, we picked her up and were off!

We ended up stopping outside of Greeley, CO where one of my BESTEST friends used to live, for dinner at Panera. I had the usual pre-race meal of a turkey sandwich with some delicious spicy mayo and potato soup. Nom nom. Then it was back on the road. Sadly I had to wave goodbye to the Nike outlet store before I even got a chance to meet it. Sniffle. :(

When we finally got to Ft. Collins, I was in awe of the beauty of the city. I think I would move there in a heart beat. Part of our team and our volunteers were already there! After driving 15 (??) hours from Cali, they had gotten in around 10am, and were also starving. Dinner #2, here we come. We loaded back into our sweet minivan along with Bobbi from N Her Shoes and Melissa from Trying to Heal. The pizza place we ended up at made me SUPER upset that we ate at Panera. It looked amazing. Luckily for me, they had Skinny Dip beer on top at happy hour prices. Mmmm that's the kind of dessert I was looking for. It was then that I realized that the brewery for New Belgium (maker of Fat Tire & Skinny Dip my two FAVE beers) was in Ft. Collins!!! Why oh why do I have to run a relay tomorrow!?!?!

It was right around this time that we learned that one of our teammate, Alesha's, flight had been re-routed to Amarillo, TX because of the storms in Denver, and we had no idea when she was going to get in. Uh oh. Once we learned that she was on her way to Denver, and that the second van's ETA was after midnight, we decided we would meet them in the morning and called it a night! 5:30am was going to come very quickly, especially after a full day of flying.

I settled into bed with my soon to be footsie/snuggle partner, Melissa, and fell into a fitfull/restless slumber.......

Stay tuned for Day 2 of our adventure. :)