Ville to Ville Relay Recap

Earlier this month, I got to run one of my bucket list races, the Ville to Ville Craft Beer Relay. Every year I had suffered from a serious case of FOMO seeing all the pictures from teams that friends of mine were on and I vowed I would do this race one day. Well, last Fall, I was approached by one of my fellow Fleet Feet runners, Nicole, had a few spots open on a team she had registered. I immediately claimed one!

So here are the basics. The races is a 72 mile relay from AsheVille, NC to GreenVille, SC. A team of up to 6 runners take turns running a total of 12 legs that vary from the shortest being 4.16 miles (Leg 12) to the longest being 9.64 miles (Leg 9). Most were around 6-7 miles. And if you are not familiar with this area, you are running over some pretty severe elevation. 

The elevation profile for my first Leg - Fletcher to Hendersonville

Before the race, you submit your anticipated team average pace and based on that, your team is given a start time around two weeks before race day. These waves start at 5:00 am and go through at least 8:30 am (that was the latest time I heard at least). My team submitted a 9:45 average pace and were given a 7 am start time. 

Gail, Christine, Victoria, Me, Jeramy and Nicole

The website has a TON of information on it, super useful when preparing. There are detailed breakdowns of each leg including directions for both runners and drivers for you print out and carry with you. Each of the 12 legs were rated by difficulty: Easy, Moderate, Hard and Super Hard. Our team was extremely thoughtful when assigning legs attempting to fairly distribute the mileage and the difficulty. For example, I was assigned Leg 4 and Leg 11 which gave me 12 miles with one leg rated Super Hard (the 2nd hardest leg) and one leg rated Easy (the 2nd easiest). My teammates legs all looked pretty similar, 12-ish miles give or take and fairly distributed difficulty. One of our teammates was a WIZ at creating complicated Excel spreadsheets. Seriously, I think she might be a math witch. 

The theme of the 2023 Ville to Ville race was Hollywood. It is strongly encouraged for your team to dress up to theme and there are awards for things like Best Costumes, Best Team Name and Best Social Media Postings. So once we noticed we had a team of 1 guy and 5 girls, we leaned into the Hollywood theme and named ourselves Jeramy's Angels. This worked doubly well in that our Charlie (or Jeramy) had to leave the team before the finish line so he would be crossing "virtually" as a voice in a box, much like Charlie would on Charlie's Angels. We decided on color coordinated outfits with tutus for the ladies and a running tux shirt for our fella. These were for photo purposes only as the tutus were a bit much to run in and according to Jeramy, running in the tux shirt was like "being under a wool blanket with 2 cats". We looked amazing though. 

One of the rules is that you can only have one vehicle on the course for transporting your team from exchange point to exchange point. Our team rented a minivan to act as our transport vehicle for the weekend. We packed her up with all our gear (Chistine was our baggage check to make sure that we did not overpack) and food (we totally packed way too much - Victoria made SO many PB&Js and PB Bagels, we were never hungry), gathered the crew and drove to Asheville.

Packet pick up for the race was at New Belgium Brewing in Asheville the evening before the race (no day of pick up). We drove straight there and arrived around 4:30 after a bit of yucky traffic from it raining. In addition to our team tracking bracelet, shirts, bibs, and medals, we were given a pint glass, beer koozie and drink ticket each. You had a choice of 4 different beers, I chose the Voodoo Ranger Juicy Hazy IPA, a really great beer I have had before. 

We met up with 3 other groups of runners (our sister Fleet Feet team plus 2 other local groups from Rock Hill/Fort Mill). We got to meet the race director as well, who was dressed in a tuxedo, leaning into the Hollywood theme. There was music, vendors plus the bar had drinks specials for those who wanted more than their initial free beer. The rain stopped while we hung out and we took some pics and had a great time. 

Teams: Jeramy's Angels and CeCe's Friends

Afterwards, my team, and the other team of Fleet Feet runners (CeCe's Friends) went out to dinner then off to the hotel to get some sleep before the big day. I roomed with a girl on the other team, and they had an hour earlier wave time (they started at 6:00 am), so it was a 4:15 am wake up call for me! 

Out hotel was very close to the start, so we met in the lobby at 6:00 am for our 7:00 am start time. We dressed in our Jeramy's Angels shirts and headed off to the race site with a quick stop to fill the gas tank so we wouldn't have to during the race. 

There were about 40-50 other teams starting with us, each with their own van, so parking was a bit of a struggle to maneuver the parking area, but we found a space that we thought would be easy to get out of (spoiler alert: it was not). We took some fun pics and then walked our first runner, Jeramy, to the start area. Right at 7:00 am, Jeramy's Angels had officially begun! 

Nicole handing off the tracker to me

This post is starting to get super long, so I am not going to go into the minutia of the race here. Our team had a runner on course at all times with a timing bracelet that we would exchange to the next runner in a marked transition zone. We tracked the runners via the RaceJoy App which I will most likely do a post about just that. Overall, it was a solid way to track with just a few minor issues. We mostly knew where our runner was at all times. The legs were on roads (with the exception of the first leg had some trail sections and the last 3 legs had sections on the Swamp Rabbit trail (which was paved and ran parallel to the main roads. The course was straight up HARD in some places, but it was an enjoyable hard. I enjoyed the parts, even though there was a lot of UPHILL. Like A LOT!

Here are some notable observations:

• I never felt alone on the course like I did when running the previous relays I have done like the GAP and Ragnar Relays. There were many more teams and we ran on roads, so it felt more like an actual race. You had plenty of opportunity to pass and be passed.
  
  
• 

  People watching the other teams was a ton of fun. Many dressed in fun costumes. Some of the notable ones were: Will Ferral characters, Muppets, full on ball gowns, Top Gun, The Hollywood Sign, League of Their Own, The Pink Ladies, different Brittany Spears outfits and many more. I had huge admiration for the dude I saw running the hardest leg of the race dressed as Ron Burgundy (pictured to the right)!
  
  
• The exchange points were chaotic, but an organized chaos. There were plenty of port-a-potties including 2 reserved for the "Runner on Deck" at each exchange. However, do note that later in the day, you will want to bring your own toilet paper just in case. The only exchange I was at that had zero TP was the leg 9/10 hand off. 
  
  
• The course was hands down, absolutely BEAUTIFUL! I took a ton of scenic pictures. If you have never been through this area of NC/SC, you are missing out.

• You will want to bring your own food, water and other race day essentials. There are no aid stations, not even at the transitions, and most exchange stations were not near town centers with easy to get in and out of restaurant options (though we did find a cool coffee shop during leg 3). The exception was the Leg 10/11 transition which was at Swamp Rabbit Brewing. The food and beer there looked amazing and there were lots of other options close by, but Leg 11 was mine, so I had to run instead of partaking!
  
  
• You are given your medals at packet pick up so that you can "award" yourself your medal after your last leg. My team decided to hold on to ours and put them on all together at the finish line. That you have the option was nice and kept the finish line clearer. 
  
  
• There were FREE race pictures! I only saw a photographer at the finish, but there were some scattered throughout the course during the day. We just somehow seemed to miss them. See below for our Finish Line Photo!
  
  

The girls are ready to help Gail into 
her tutu for our triumphant finish

After 12 long legs of challenging running, my team changed back into our tutus for that final run as a group across the finish line (sans Jeramy as he had to leave us after Leg 10, but I did call him on my cell so he could "experience" the finish. The 4 of us left waited along the straightaway close to the finish for our final runner, Gail, to come in. We helped her quickly into her shirt and tutu and crossed the finish together in a vision of colorful tulle. 

Jeramy's Angels had a finish time of 11 hours, 38 minutes and 8 seconds. Our goal average pace was 9:45 and we hit 9:47, which I think was pretty dang awesome! (All thanks to Gail and her complicated spreadsheets).

The after party at Hampton Station was really nice. My brother lives in Greenville, but I had never been to Hampton Station before. There were lots of cool shops, bars and resturants there and they brought in a ton of food trucks for the occasion as well. Everyone got a free beer with a ticket on their bib. You could purchase others if you wanted to. There was also Ville to Ville gear for sale. I had preordered a 4-pack of the "official" Ville to Ville beer andNicole and I walked over to Birds Fly South Ale Project to pick those up. We met up with CeCe's Friends and took a ton of pictures before deciding that we needed to head out to get some dinner. It was a long day, but it was SO MUCH FUN! 

Jeramy's Angels and Jeramy's Angels and CeCe's Friends

Like I said, I didn't really do a play-by-play the day, but if you have any specific questions about the race, the course or anything, just drop me a comment below. I am happy to discuss this awesome race further. 

Would I recommend Ville to Ville: Heck Yeah! Would I do it again? Well my team has already registered for next year's race! While I am not 100% sure I will be able to run it (it is so hard to commit that far in advance) but I have first rights of refusal with my team and I will do what I can to work it in. This race is SO popular though, you pretty much have to register you team the day immediately after running it. Seriously, it sold out in 25 hours!! 

My GAP Relay Experience: #GapTrailBR Race Recap (part 2)

 I received team entry to the GAP Relay as a part of being a BibRave Pro. Check out BibRave.com to read and write race reviews.

We Conquered the GAP Relay!! #GapTrailBR Race Recap

I received team entry to the GAP Relay as a part of being a BibRave Pro. Check out BibRave.com to read and write race reviews.

Run for the Zoo Virtual Recap

Disclaimer: I am participating in the Lincoln Park Run for the Zoo as part of being a BibRave Pro. Learn more about becoming a BibRave Pro (ambassador), and check out BibRave.com to review, find, and write race reviews!

So I am a bit late in posting this update (I promise I have a legit reason, I'll be posting about that soon too) but last weekend I ran the Virtual Run for the Zoo to benefit the Lincoln Park Zoo. 

Now, there have been a lot of virtual race opportunities lately and it would have been easy to just treat this like another run to tick off a list, but my run bestie, Kim (aka @BarkingMadRun) and I wanted to make this race as special as the organization it was to benefit. So we planned a race day extravaganza ( you can read about the before-race plans here: https://runnerdgirl.blogspot.com/2020/04/virtually-running-wild-with-lincoln.html

So here's how it went. 

I got up bright and early on Sunday to head over to Kim's house. She was super gracious to host the event and to map out the course. I had planned to run 10K when I originally registered, but my bad knee was getting worse and worse by the day. I was a bit worried about being able to complete the distance. Kim mapped me a 5K course just in case and I figured if I was still feeling strong after the first lap, I could just do a 2nd. Also Kim ordered some super fun inflatable animals for us to hang out with at the Start/Finish Line in front of her house. They were so cute. I instantly fell in love with the zebra! As soon as I saw him, I knew I'd be riding him! I brought some Animal Crackers for our aid station and Kim also chalked us a Start and Finish Line. Things were looking super festive for our race. 

For my race, since I wasn't super familiar with Kim's neighborhood, she not only gave me a route on a slip of paper, but also she and her awesome hubby drove their golf cart ahead to mark the turns. She also was my mobile water station carrying my water bottle for me so I didn't have to. Basically, they were my heroes. It was awesome to be able to see them up in the distance and wave as I ran past with Kim cheering me on. It was like having my own personal cheering squad.

Unfortunately, as I had sort of suspected, my knee was not up to cooperating for the 10K distance. Shortly past the half way mark, my knee gave out of me and I had to limp it off a bit. I felt okay to keep going for the shorter distance so I pushed on. My awesome race crew was waiting for me around mile 2 for me to grab a drink from my water and I was off again. Another knee give way during the last quarter mile told me for sure that this was it. In fact this ended up being my last run before having knee surgery. I finished my 5K in 26:53 which, considering my knee, I was okay with.

Mobile Water Stop!

After I finished, we had an epic Finisher's Party! Kim and I, having both run our races, changed into our totally adorable finisher's shirts! For an extra donation, you could have gotten a medal that was also super cute and featured the same ostrich as the shirt. 

We had a ton of fun taking a ton of finisher photos with our inflatable friends, and to replicate an "official" finisher's party, Kim's hubby even hooked me up with some finish line beer. He even made us breakfast after! Seriously, I think these two have a future in race day even planning. 

As far as the official business of the virtual, once completed, I entered my results into the Run for the Zoo website. There were several virtual prizes for runners from fastest times to the most money raised and a few random draws as well. The event organizers sent ample emails with lots of information about the event and the zoo, especially where the proceeds went. There was also a Facebook Event page set up for participants to share info and virtually "hang out".

All in all, it was an awesome virtual race. I didn't exactly plan it to be my last run before a 12 week or so hiatus, but it was a heck of a way to go out. 

For more information about the Lincoln Park Zoo and the Run for the Zoo event, check out thier website here. https://www.lpzoo.org/run-zoo

You can also check out Kim's take on the event and her race experience here: http://barkingmadaboutrunning.blogspot.com/2020/06/lincoln-park-zoo-virtual-run-for-zoo.html

And don't worry about the inflatable animals, they have all found really great homes post-race. In fact, one in particular is being spoiled by my little one. I think he likes his new outfit 😀

So Yeah, I'm a Marathoner Now

"Disclaimer: I received entry to the Tobacco Road Marathon to review as part of being a BibRave Pro. Learn more about becoming a BibRave Pro (ambassador), and check out BibRave.com to review find and write race reviews!"

HOLY BUTTS! I RAN A MARATHON!!!

It wasn't pretty. I had a pretty rough last few miles, but I did it. Here's the breakdown -

This was my 2nd time running Tobacco Road, but my first time on the Marathon Course (I ran the Half last year). Man, what a great race. It is small enough to make you feel like you are getting individual attention with small touches like the RD shaking everyone's hand at the finish line, but large enough to be exciting.

On the Road to Tobacco Road

I drove in about 2.5 hours to Cary with the family and stayed at the host hotel for the Expo, which was super nice and had a few perks for runners like free reception the night before and free late check out for runners. The Expo was small, but well organized and a few cool things this year like a visit from Jeff Galloway who gave a talk and was gracious enough to chat with and take photos with anyone who wanted to. I'm always too self conscience for that, but two of my friends got their bibs signed and he greeted them like old friends. We got race specific tech shirts, which were an upgrade from the previous year. The Half shirts were lime green and the Marathon were a pretty teal. 

Perhaps my least favorite, and only real issue with Tobacco Road is the parking situation. There are really 2 parking options (3 if you count getting dropped off) 1 - purchase 1 of a limited number of parking passes and 2 - parking at a remote lot and taking the shuttle in. Pretty straight forward, but both require you to arrive by 5:30 am for a 7:00 am start, which I feel is a bit too early. I rode with a friend with a parking pass and arrived right at 5:30 where we sat in the warm car for 45 min before getting out to use the ample port-a-potties and looking for other friends. The BibRave team met up and took a quick picture. 3 of us were doing the Marathon (2 of us our first) and 3 the Half. We wished each other good luck and then split off. I lined up at the start about 15 min before the race and pacers were well positioned for both the Half and the Full distances. I found the 4:35 pacer and positioned myself well back, but ahead of the 4:50 pacer. Was hoping for an under 5 hour finish. 

Team BibRave  in the HOUSE (err... ROAD)

The first 2.5 miles of the course was on road and had a few hills. Nothing I hadn't trained for, but a bit hilly nonetheless. Both the Half and Full start at the same time and cover this distance together. I ended up catching up with a friend who was running the Half and ran with her until the split. When you arrived the trail, the Marathoners turned right, while the Halfers tuned left. The right trail was hard packed dirt for the first few miles, then half hard packed/half asphalt so you could choose which surface to run on. There were a few road crossings that we well managed by police and support stations heavily manned with cheering people and water, Gatorade, gels, and Stroop waffles. At mile 7 (and 11) there was a Mimosa station that had bacon too. You ran to about mile 9, then turned back to where you started, where you were at just around mile 14. Then you crossed the main road (well manned with police) and started on the Half course. This side was all hard packed. You ran to about mile 19, then turned back to where you came onto the trail. Just past the turn around point, there was a huge spread of all kinds of goodies - cookies, snacks a ton of stuff that I didn't stop to check out, but was super nice. There were several port-a-potty stations also along the course. Once you came off the trail, you made you way back to Thomas Brooks Park down the same 2.5 miles you came in on. I felt the hills a bit more the way back, but nothing terrible, just gently rolling.

Not my picture, nor the time of year of the race - photo credit: TrailLink.
But wanted to show the Marathon Course trail.

Not gonna lie, I am STRUGGLING here!

I am not going to lie, the course is a bit on the boring side. It is pretty much the same exact view for 22 of the 26 miles - bare trees on a straight path. I don't mind out and back courses with limited crowd support much, but if you do, this is not the race for you. The crowds that were there we at road crossings and were very friendly and super supportive. In fact, around mile 21.5, I was feeling rough. That wall is real people, and this really nice lady came over to me and gave me a hug and some encouraging words. It was super kind. By then I was had switched to intervals and was pretty sure that my goal of under 5 hours was not going to happen. I ran to the mile marker, walked a tenth, then started up running again. Those last few miles all I could think was get to the next mile marker. 

Lots of excitement at the finish that was a bit of a blur to me to be honest, but there was a beer garden, free pizza, water stations, chocolate milk and I'm sure lots of other things I missed. Tons of volunteers were on hand for anything you needed. And the huge medal was gorgeous! I plan on wearing it for quite awhile! At a very minimum, I am carrying it around in my purse and showing it to anyone who will stand still long enough. Seriously, look at this beauty! 

My husband and daughter were waiting for me at the finish (as was my run bestie - BarkingMadRun) all of who took pictures and video of me finishing. (Speaking of photos, I did remember seeing a photographer at least 3 times on course- once on the Marathon course, once on the Half course and at the finish). I tried to cross the finish line was as much cheer as I could, glad to be done, but still knowing I missed my goal by a few minutes. It was nice to get that shot of love at the finish and cannot say how happy I was to have them all there. I didn't really stick around to partake in all that the finisher party had to offer because I really really wanted to get in a shower back at the hotel before the drive home, and that meant leaving pretty much right away.

Overall, it was an amazing race for my first Marathon. Will I run another? ... NO. Not ever. People say never say never, but I am saying NEVER. Nothing to do with the race, Tobacco Road was amazing - I'd run the Half again and again - but I HATED training and running a marathon. It took up so much of my time, it felt like I was working a second, exhausting full time job in addition to all of my other commitments. It made running a horrible chore, and it probably didn't help that this was one of the wettest Winters on record. I spent so many hours cold, wet and miserable, that even though race day was perfect weather (thank goodness), I was just so over the whole process. 

One of the reasons that we challenge ourselves with great tasks is to learn about ourselves and I learned that I really do not enjoy running these longer distances. And you know what, that's okay. Different strokes for different folks, right? When my daughter was little, we used to tell her that if everyone liked the same thing, the world would be very boring. I'm glad I did it. I'm glad I set the goal, put in the work and proved that I could. Even though I missed my timing goal, (let's be honest, the REAL goal was to just finish, which I did) even though the last 4 miles were a DISASTER, I'm proud. 

I'm a Marathoner. I am one of the 1%. I am MIGHTY!

And here's another look at that beautiful medal!