18 hours, 29 minutes, and 29 seconds after departing the start in Logan, UT, the MarathonGIS.com team crossed the finish line in Park City, UT to finish 3rd place out of 296 finishers in the 4th installment of the Ragnar Wasatch Back Relay.

This performance equates to a blistering average pace of 6:16/mile over the 177-mile course. The high-altitude course (elevations ranging from 4500′ to 8900′) traverses the scenic backside of the Wasatch Range, and features cumulative elevation gain/loss of 14,232ft/11776ft.

The combination of heat, altitude, lack of sleep, muscle fatigue, and mountainous topography makes the Wasatch Back a challenging endeavor year after year, and we were quite happy with our accomplishment. Weber State and BYU proved to once again be strong opponents, and swept the 1-2 spots for the 4th straight year, with times of 17:40:40 and 17:51:51, respectively. Running stores 26.2 Running Company and Runners Corner rounded out the Top 5, with 19:18:18 and 19:25:25, respectively.

We were hoping to challenge BYU or Weber a little bit, but this did not happen. However we were proud to be the first non-college team to break 18:30. This is not an official record or anything, but we’ll take what we can get!

Thanks to Dan Hill, Tanner Bell, and the rest of the Ragnar Relay staff for their flawless logistics and dedication to providing “the best”. Thanks also to the hundreds of volunteers who sat or stood long (and often late) hours, directing runners, vans, and providing aid wherever it was needed. And thanks to all the participating teams whose enthusiasm and competitiveness make the event what it is.

Well, the Wasatch Back Relay is almost upon us. This means three things:

1. Time to start rummaging around the basement for headlamps, coolers, reflective vests, and other miscellaneous debris
2. Time for a team member to call me to say “I can’t run” due to:
• Injury
• Sickness
• Work
• Dog attack
• Some combination of the above
3. Time for me to go into emergency find-a-runner panic mode.

Every (and I mean EVERY) relay I have run, we have lost runners with less than two weeks until the race, and have had to find last-minute ringers. Fortunately, our ringers are generally pretty fast.

This year, with one week to go until Wasatch Back, our entire original team was still intact. I started to get nervous. Something seemed wrong.

With three days to go (ie, yesterday), our entire original team was still intact. Now I am sweating nervous. This is definitely not right. We should have had one, nay, two runners drop by now. Was someone just not telling me something??

I decided to pick up the phone and make some calls. Turns out one guy was indeed “out” due to sickness and scheduling, just nobody knew about it until now. Good thing I called! As usual with these situations, he was very apologetic, but I never hold these kinds of things against people. Get 12 runners together, probability and statistics dictate that at least one will get injured or sick during the time preceding the race. It’s just a fact of life with runners.

So I learned that we were down a runner at 8AM Wednesday, about 56 hours before our start time. With travel time and planning, we realistically had about 24 hours to find a replacement runner. And not just any replacement, but a runner of 2:40 marathon caliber or faster. A tall order. But this is where things got cool.

Within the hour, our team set the search process in motion. Like clockwork, we networked through phone, email, and blogs, through cellular networks and through cyberspace.

Perhaps our most useful asset was the FastRunningBlog, an online training blog community that most of our team participates in. There are many fast runners on the Blog, and a large number of them live in Utah, which makes them available targets. Blog friends were contacted, as well as friends of friends. Over the next several hours, I received many “no” answers from potential canditates (most people already had a team). But sure enough, by 4PM Wednesday (8 hours later), we had our 2:40 marathoner. Our new teammate was the friend of a friend and is on the FastRunningBlog as well. The system works.

Panic mode is over.

On that note, since joining the FastRunningBlog, my network of runner friends has greatly expanded. I feel like I know half the runners in Utah now. And it’s not just an online thing (which would be exceptionally nerdy), but I see these people face-to-face at most of my races. The Utah running scene is a small pond, now made even smaller by the Blog. From Logan all the way down to St. George, connections and contacts have been made. New friendships have been established, and there’s new places to stay while traveling.

And it’s a heck of a lot easier to fill relay teams!

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