Altamont Marathon

This inaugural race was put on by a local coach and Without Limits. There was a 5K and a half and full marathon over Paris Mountain, a local mountain popular with cyclists and runners looking for a challenge, as well as a marathon relay. Since the Smoky Mountain relay is less than a week away, I had decided just to do the marathon relay and found a team back in January. But then we got an invitation to the wedding of one of Brad's best friends from high school... in Maryland... the day before the race. I really wanted to do it, so we found flights that could make it possible, if everything went perfectly. We would get up super early, I would wear my running clothes on the plane, we would land at 8:23, and based on my team's estimated times I wouldn't be running until at least 9:15 if I did our last leg... so that's what we did. Craziness!

And, amazingly, it all worked out as planned. We were leaving the airport (about an 18 minute drive) as our third runner was headed towards the exchange. He's super fast, but he had a 6.5-mile run over a mountain, so I knew we'd get there first. I had persuaded a friend who was volunteering at the exchange to be my backup in case we didn't make it, but he was pretty happy to see us show up. I started running at 9:42.

It was perfect weather on a beautiful but challenging course (1000 feet of elevation in only 6.8 miles), and I really enjoyed the run. (FYI, these pictures are from a training run a few weeks ago!)

I knew we were the third place relay team when I started, so my main goal was to keep that, and I did!

We won our choice of Without Limits / Upstate Ultras t-shirts, so I picked this super-soft orange one and wore it over my Undress to our post-race brunch at Tandem (mmm, crepes...).