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!!