The Blue Ridge Relay Chronicle, pt. 3

A hilarious development that occurred during that Chinese buffet lunch was that we discovered our Asheville Airbnb, i.e. Party House 2, had been sold out from under us with no prior notice, so we couldn't stay there anymore. My co-captain hastily rented a new place in the same general area. We'll get back to this later.

After a big pasta dinner, we divvied up the bibs and went to bed. Our bibs were marked 166, because that's where we were seeded out of 186 (or so) teams. Each person had the team number followed by a hyphen for their registered place in the runner order. I was 166-4, SVC was 166-6, DAM was 166-8, and sadville was 166-12. Our drivers were 166-13 and 166-14. You had to wear the bib for every one of your legs (mine looked like complete trash by the end, it was amazing). The bibs didn't have timing chips or anything, they were just there so the race officials at each exchange zone could write down when you came in.

At this point, Runner 11 had yet to appear. She did however text me that she expected to arrive between 4 and 4:30 am.

sadville rolled in around 7:30 pm on Thursday night and we were all hugely glad to see him, since our plans for not crashing and burning hinged on having him around. Also he was just a really upbeat, positive personality and a lot of fun to have around, so that was good too.

One of my big takeaways from doing BRR is that you really, really need to have a cheerful-spirited crew to make the adventure go well. I've used this comparison before, but it really does remind me of the part in The Terror where the British Navy is putting their expedition together and they pick Tobias Menzies because he exemplifies the chin-up, no-complaining, can-do spirit of the enterprise, and they think he'll help the crew maintain good cheer in the face of brutal conditions.

That is also the sort of person you want for an ultra relay. I am happy to report that everyone on our team absolutely crushed it on that aspect.

From this point until we reunited at the finish line, my version of the story diverges from Van 2's. You really don't see too much of your teammates in the other van while the relay is going on, except at the van swap EZs, and after the first exchange, nobody really has that much energy left to hang out in the transition zones (or at least we didn't; other teams who are better at planning their logistics might be able to hold out longer. By EZ24 it really did not look like anybody on any team had any spare energy left to do jack shit, though).

So at 3 am, Van 1 woke up. By 3:30, we loaded into the van that was going to be our home for the next two days and left the party house. We got to the start line at 4:30 and checked in. It was surreally gloomy, dark, cold, and broken up by the nervous energy of all the teams around us. Because we were starting with the first wave, we were mostly with first-timers and fellow slowpokes, who were presumably way more beset with race nerves than the veterans and faster runners in later teams, but I'm just speculating on that part.

Anyway there was one van that was just blasting '60s classics (Shirelles, Beach Boys, I don't remember the rest but SVC would). It was kind of a weird choice for pump-up music, but I chose to take it as a good omen that this one van was, inexplicably, going hard with SVC's favorite jams.

Around 4:50 everybody clustered at the start line with their safety gear on. There was a lot of pre-race prayer going on. BRR draws a ton of F3 teams -- it seems to be a big local tradition for a lot of these guys -- and they like to do prayer circles at the start. (F3 stands for "Fitness, Fellowship, Faith." It's like a men's-only Christian Crossfit thing. The apparent purpose of the organization is to help guys find friends with physically and spiritually healthy habits so that they can support each other. Based on my limited observation, a lot of them appear to be normal, but a substantial minority look like disciples of David Goggins, thousand-yard stares and eagerness to injure themselves and all. We'll get back to this again later too.)

There was not a lot of pomp or circumstance to launching the first wave. No Star-Spangled Banner, no pistol shot, literally just the race director saying "okay, in 5 seconds we're gonna start. 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... go!" and that was it, Runner 1 was off and our race officially began.

The Blue Ridge Relay Chronicle, pt. 2

Here we are loading our van at stupid o'clock. I made SVC and DAM walk to my co-captain's house because the weather was nice and it seemed like a more auspicious prelude to our adventure to walk through the hushed city streets. Also, more importantly, I didn't want to lose my step count streak on a travel day:

We then drove down to DC to pick up Runner 7, Runner 10, and Driver 2, and from there continued to West Jefferson NC, with a brief detour to Enterprise Rent-A-Car in order to get Driver 2 authorized to drive one of the vans. During this detour, I wandered around the strip mall complex because, again, I was trying to maintain my step count streak. I found a Nepalese clothing store that was disappointingly closed (otherwise I would probably have bought something) and went to a Dunkin' Donuts where I bought absolutely the worst bagel of my life. It tasted like an electrical fire and somehow sprayed melted fake butter past my back (?? it's like the butter jet went through me) onto the rental van seat.

cool

These two shops back-to-back were certainly... something. Taking "Reading" out of "Terminal Market" really changes the vibe.

Around this point I started getting really carsick and would lie down on my seat with my feet up against the ceiling to make it go away. Brian kept thinking he'd left me behind somewhere and then he'd look back and see my feet where my head should be. He thought this was peculiar, but I think it's weird more people don't ride like that.

We stopped near JMU for lunch. These are the fortunes that three of our team members got:

Then SVC got one that said "In February, a new romantic horizon will open."

>:(

Outside this restaurant, a bunch of slightly weedy cornstalks were growing on a steep slope that went down toward a train track. I gleefully scavenged an ear of corn before realizing that it wasn't wild, but an extremely amateurish garden probably being maintained by one of the employees at the Chinese restaurant. I felt pretty bad about inadvertently stealing this person's corn but honestly, given the condition of the garden and the fact that they had a bunch of rotting cherry tomatoes lying around unharvested, not that bad.

We got to the party house around 4-4:30 or thereabouts. It had a "Live Bait" sign above the hot tub, a bunch of Jesus birds around the house, and a phenomenal master bathroom feat. a gigantic porcelain soaking tub with a sheepskin rug in front of it, and a massive shower with FOUR showerheads in it (two wall-mounted directional ones, an overhead rain fountain one, and a detachable one).

It also had a ton of beds. There were four bunk beds in the basement like in a submarine, four beds in the attic, multiple other bedrooms and couch beds, really just an ungodly number of beds in this house. The Airbnb description said it slept 19, which seems right. I assume it was constructed this way from the begnning because I don't know how you fit that many beds into any normal house.

The walking trail right outside of it was gorgeous though. DAM and I went for a short walk and it was glorious, all piney fresh air and butterflies and wooded trails lined with tall yellow flowers.

Then we got to a neighbor's unmarked house and were afraid we'd get shot for trespassing because it wasn't clear where the trail went from that point, so we just went home.

An Incomplete Chronicle of the 2025 Blue Ridge Relay, pt. 1

An Incomplete Chronicle of the Blue Ridge Relay (hpn 2025 ed.)

Here are the away signs that my co-workers made for their office doors.

This is Brian, our driver:

This is Patrick, aka Runner 2: 

On Wednesday, DAM came over to crash at our place because the Philly caravan had to leave at 5:30 am in order to get to the party house by a reasonable hour, or so we thought. In fact it turned out that we overestimated how long it was going to take and could have left two hours later and been absolutely fine, which might have been the better move, [i]but[/i] then we would also have had to stress a lot more about hitting a tighter deadline. So maybe it was for the best that we woke up ass early and left in the dark. I still don't know.

Anyway here's the bed that Pickles made for DAM on the living room floor, feat. her doll Sophie as a hospitality token (she then apparently immediately told DAM that she wasn't allowed to use any of the other toys, only Sophie):