What did I get myself into?

The relay will be over on the other side of those mountains over there.(the Sisters)  This is on the top of Wolf Rock when I climbed it in 2009.  Click here to read about that adventure.

 Well, the new year is almost here and I have to start getting in shape and losing some weight.  In order to give myself some motivation to actually do this, I signed up to run on a company team in the Cascade Lakes Relay.  It is a 200+ mile relay race from Diamond Lake to Bend, Oregon.  There are 12 members on each team and each of us will run 3 legs.  Early in December we all got our lane assignments, so to speak.  There was a team meeting at which everyone in attendance was able to pick the 3 legs they wanted to do.  Unfortunately, I was unable to attend this meeting.  So a few days later, I got a sheet with all the legs listed and had to put my name into the legs that I wanted to run out of the few that had not yet been selected.

My first run is leg #3.  It is 7.5 miles long, starts at 5043' elevation and drops down gradually to 4614'.  It is my longest leg and all downhill.  My second run is leg # 18.  It is only 5.3 miles long.  It has 98' of elevation loss and 317' of elevation gain, so it is mostly up hill.  My last run will be leg # 30.  It is 3.9 miles long and gains over 550 feet in elevation.  It is my shortest run, but is labeled as a "hard" leg.  In total I will have to run 16.7 miles.  Looking at these now make me wonder what I got myself into, but I did used to be a runner so I should be able to get myself into shape for it.  I guess I better start training.