Grand Teton Relay!!

Thursday, August 18th was our 5 year anniversary. I really can't believe it's been five years, it has gone by sooo fast! We had registered a LONG time ago to run in the Grand Teton Relay over the weekend so we are celebrating our anniversary another weekend. The relay was a 200 mile run from Ashton, ID to Teton Village, WY. It's just like Ragnar where you have a team of 12 divided into 6 runners in 2 vehicles. Cody had to be up at 5am to go work for a few hours and I felt like I had to do something for him so I set my alarm for 4am so I could cook him a nice big breakfast of biscuits & gravy, scrambled eggs, OJ and fresh strawberries. He loved it! I sure love that boy and am thankful everyday I get to be his wife. Once he was off work that afternoon we grabbed our bags and were off on our GRAND adventure!

This is the only picture of us we got on our actual anniversary. We just got to our hotel in Ashton, ID and we were more than ready for bed at this point. Our truck got a little distracted on the way and almost ended up in Montana.. oops! :) Van 2 got to the hotel way before us and switched all of our sheets on our beds to the short way..... we were shortsheeted. Of course once they went to bed we tagged their van with car paint and wet toilet paper!


Cody and I first thing Friday morning... ready to RUN!


Our team "What the Hell?" truck.



Our other team vehicle..

They weren't too happy to see we got them back!

We hit the starting line at 8:30 and I was the first one to take off for our team, here's me just finishing my first run!

Cody aiding our team co-captain Alisha!

All of the views on our runs were GORGEOUS! We had to stop for some photos!

Blake lying next to a stick figure with RIP above its head. We saw TONS of these along the whole run and we thought they were pretty funny, considering that's EXACTLY how we were feeling!

Cody just finishing his first run. Can I just say my hubs is AMAZING! He seriously blew past everyone he ran with and averaged around a 6-7 min mile. He was the talk of the whole race! I thought I knew he had it in him but he totally surprised me! He's a natural!! I'm SO proud of him.

Checking the temp of the pavement. Some of our runs were in the dead heat of the day. My cute little auntie Kim even had a little bit of heatstroke on her first run (someone else running beside her on another team was even sent to the hospital). We went through LOTS of water!

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After our 5 finished our runs it was time to hand off to our Van 2 for theirs. We had about 6 hours to kill so we found a park and tried to get a little rest before our night runs started.

Waiting for our other teammates to finish to send me off on my first night run. We ended up starting around 11pm. Is it just me or are those night runs a little CREEPY?! All I had was a little headlamp that gave off literally no light. I seriously thought I was going to get kidnapped! It ended up being one of my fastest runs, ha ha! I was actually the lucky one though, I had a beautiful run while the rest of my team ended up running trail runs in the dark. No broken ankles though.... whew!

Cody captured this photo while I was running my last run Saturday morning. All together we saw this cow moose, a doe and 2 fawns, an elk, 2 bald eagles and lot's of horses and buffalo. SO cool! We were just happy we didn't run into any BEARS!!

24 hours and 20+ miles later.. I was DONE! Whoo hoo!

Cody goofing off during Alishas last run..

This kid was an animal!! (On his 7 miler.)

Check out the Tetons behind Cody..

Cody right after he was DONE!

Some of us girls waiting at the exchange for truck 1's last runner to make it in.

Here comes Michelle to hand off to my aunt Kimmy, meaning our truck 1 is DONE! After this we had 6 hours to kill before meeting our Van 2 at the finish line!!!

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Waiting in Teton Village at the finish line was such a cool feeling. Our teams last runner (in Van 2) was my mom and my aunt Kims cousin Natalie. Cody ran up to meet her about a half a mile before the finish to encourage and support her. He took all of her heavy gear and helped her to pass another runner to beat her across the finish line. She was so glad to have Cody finish the end with her, it was the coolest thing ever! He's such a sweetheart.

"Thomas family" photo :) Kim, Nat and I

Team "What the Hell?" photo!

Showing off our bling, ha ha!

As I mentioned earlier our truck only had 5 runners where we should've had 6. We had a runner drop a week before the race and couldn't ever fill her spot so.... that meant instead of 3 runs each some of us actually ran 4! We marked ourselves after completing each run.

WE DID IT!!!

We had a BLAST, even Cody! I can't imagine spending this crazy, fun weekend without him. He was the party of the group and had everyone laughing the whole time. I'm so happy he agreed to run this with me, especially since he ended up being a ROCKSTAR! I think he's addicted now. :)

Anniversary celebration to come soon.....

Can you tell I'm ready for Fall??