the Dalaverse

It's actually about something rather extraordinary I'm doing tomorrow.

I'm on a team of twelve people running in a 200 mile relay race. We'll start in Gettysburg, PA and run down to Washington, DC. It's a 36-hour event. We start at 7:45 am tomorrow and finish up around 6pm on Saturday. Each runner has 3 legs of varying length and difficulty; in between running, we'll be traveling in 2 vans along the route.

Since I'm one of the experienced runners, my total mileage is about 19. Leg 1 is 6 miles, Leg 2 is 4.7 miles, and Leg 3 is 8.6 miles (it'll be flat along the canal, but it also starts around 4am). And as luck would have it, my Leg 1 is the Leg 1, meaning my slow ass gets to go first (fortunately we have tiny pixie L., who runs a 7.5 minute mile, to make up for me).

We came up with this crazy plan back in January as a fundraiser for our clients, specifically to lower the extra fees if a student requires 1:1 support for our group activities. Our whole team is made up of our consultants, who are taking personal days tomorrow to run. The powers that be told us we'd be lucky to raise $10,000; as of today we've raised $20,279 (and counting). A bunch of our families and students are coming out to cheer us on at transition points. We've spent countless hours figuring out the logistics and details and planning, and we are gunning for the Best Costumes award. The girls will be running in rainbow tutus, the guys in rainbow suspenders and hats, and we've all got stripey rainbow knee socks.

I'm incredibly proud to be a part of something like this, and super excited to finally get to the running bit. I've pushed my pace quite a bit in the past few months despite an injury (I pulled a muscle in my back and couldn't run for basically most of March).

Of course, after repeatedly bragging that I never get sick (haven't been sick in at least a year), I've come down with a bad cold this week. I'd still run with the goddamn bubonic plague at this point, but it's gonna make things a little more interesting.

Wish me luck. It will be 36 hours of total madness.