Layton Marathon - Guinness World Record

I got it, I know I have been neglecting the blog - You know that picture that's going viral with the *ahem* older lady who is watching a sporting event and she is the only one not taking pictures or videos with a device and everyone's all "Oooo Ahhh! Look how amazing, she is LIVING life!" And all gaga about how she isn't focused on her phone. I would like to think that's me...

If you believe that I might have you snowed. 

But anyway..., I did something this weekend that is one for the record books (literally) and so many people are asking how it all went down that I simply must do a blog about it. Not only that, but there are so many great pictures that I needed somewhere to save them all. So here goes. 

This weekend I was part of a group that set out, and conquered, a goal to break the Guinness World Record for the most people tied together to complete a marathon. That's 26.2 miles. Tied. To people you don't know. A lot of them.

Going into it I was excited! It was going to be a crazy, super fun, super LONG, day but everyone was going to be all excited at the idea of breaking a record. This is what we are all here for right? Yay! Go team!

We got dropped off on the middle of an island in the Salt Lake and the stars were AMAZING and the moon was just above the horizon and you could see the whole round moon but only the bottom crescent was lit and I was like.... yep... this is pretty stinking cool. Gorgeous, gorgeous sky. 

They had a super long rope laying on the ground with loops and ropes coming off it about every three feet. We all lined up and were tied to the longer rope around our wastes, two by two, and counted and recounted and video'd. It was time, a little later start than planned, but we were ready to go! 

The idea was to have the slower runners toward the front so they could set the pace and a lot of people knew that one of the most difficult tasks was going to be for the faster runners to be able to slow down. (This was no joke...) Sara and I knew what we were in for so we were ready to just roll with it and see where it went. 

Let's start with this... Potty breaks were crazy ridiculous. There was only one honey bucket at all but the stop at mile 13 (the half start) and TOO MANY PEOPLE had to stop. I mean, we are going to be running for a (planned) 6-6.5 hours, so a stop is a given, but two miles in? Where a potty was right by the start? That's was bit of a stretch. You could not untether for the potty, so people just waited outside the door for you to finish and them the whole line moved up a little and it was the next person's turn. Go stop, go stop, stand around for 15+ minutes. 

The potty stops were getting so over the top that at one of the stops everyone just moved into the bushes and started going. Those more skilled ladies even took their turn, discretely behind the sage. I am, unfortunately not blessed with that ability so I had to wait for the mile 13, very welcome tiny (but more than one) row of honey buckets! Normally I wouldn't even have needed to go, but 7.5 hours without going isn't very healthy, so let's consider this a good thing. Just wish there were more honey buckets. Sara and I joked we would have paid an extra $5 if that's what it took to get a few more!

One of the leaders is usually not a fast runner, but he gets the job done. He has run a lot of races and lost an incredible amount of weight doing it. He is usually a sweeper at a lot of races, so that kind of gives you an idea of his usual pace.  He was struggling pretty early on, we were walking WAY too much. Between that and the long potty breaks the grumbling from the back started. We were in the 35-ish person back range and we could clearly see that he was having a really hard time. Not sure how far back it was obvious but he is well known in the running community so people from the back started calling him by name "Come on [name redacted], you can do it!" Like a lot. Like a lot a lot. And we were all thinking, eeeek! That poor guy! Why call him by name!?! That's so much pressure! We can see general cheers, but honestly... it was kind of uncalled for. 

At mile 11, and over three hours in (so, as in, not at all going to hit the best case goal of 6 hours) some woman behind us kind of started FREAKING OUT. Like, losing her lid. So the leaders kind of looped around, making a 'u' to talk to her and she was yelling "I signed up for a 6 hour marathon, I did not sign up for this!" she went on about how it was taking way too long and not what she agreed to, and then full on untied and left... gone.  (I think she was #2 who had dropped at this point actually...). One of the captains and the guy in front were like "Hold on, hold on, before anyone else drops, lets see if we can cut the people who are injured and speed things up." It was Chaos. Moral tanked.

They walked back to the front, and that leader who I spoke about cut himself off, he knew he had pushed it as far as he could and for the sake of the team and meeting the goal, he stepped off. Turns out by looking at his FaceBook, his IT Band had been bothering him for a few miles and he knew it was the right thing to do. Pretty honorable. 

Mixed feelings from the peanut gallery (us). It was the right thing to do to drop off, maybe even sooner, but it was unfair for him to be called out by name! Even though it was the right thing to do, it should have been his choice. A woman about ten in front of us was TICKED about him falling out, and she was gone within the next mile or so. Then we passed the other leader in front (and the one who championed this) puking on the side of the road. What the?! They are dropping like flies. Count and recount! We started at 88 and we were down at least 6 that we knew about. The leader walked by and told us we had one to spare. (Which, now we know was a total lie but the right thing to say to keep people from dropping off and to keep us together working as a team!)

The initial 1 and 2 guys held on and leap frogged us with the support car, cheering, supporting, taking pictures. Helping at aide stations. Way to go guys. 

The number 3 and 4 people were now in the lead and we settle into a GREAT routine of 5:1 intervals. We should have started with this from the get-go and that was the people in back knew there was a plan and weren't yelling, wondering, and getting impatient. 

At the end of the looong hot causeway from Antelope Island there was a few families waiting. And Tricia! Our friend who is the captain of our Ragnar Vegas team! She ran the 10k and didn't leave but instead came to find us and cheer! It was so nice to see a welcome face since moral was just starting to pick up after all those drop offs. Very fun to have her cheer! This actually meant more than I could have anticipated, so thanks Tricia! 

Bugs.... Oh my word! The mosquitos were as big as houseflies and there were swarms of them! swarms!! They passed down bug spray but we were trying to share and it may have been too late. I have SO MANY huge bites today. So many they were itching all night long! We got eaten alive. Seriously. Someone took a picture of the swarms of bugs along the side of the roads, I am trying to hunt that down to add. It cannot simply be captured in a photo though, there was nothing like it. 

Food... so we are like... 4 hours in, at least and most people on this line could have finished or been near the end by now if they weren't tied. No one was used to this amount of time on their feet and also fueling gets a bit tricky, we haven't done anything like this before! The aide volunteers leap frogged us and set up the next aide stations, a ton had bananas and o.m.g. the best oranges I have ever had in my life ever. Ever. They found granola bars from somewhere and about and hour and a half out one of the support cars hit a grocery store and ran down the line with bags of amazing pretzels. Thank goodness! Had I been thinking I would have pulled out Bonnie's Uncrustables trick and packed me a sandwich! 

Sun... The sun was beating down on us. Sara and my new friend Ashli got FRIED. I am a good BRF though and when I sun screened myself at 4:00 in the morning I offered it to Sara. Who thought I was nuts. I am not nuts. I got some sun (even more along my straps where the spray didn't reach) I did not burn at all. Woot! You should see the sun burn pictures I am seeing this morning!

Though if I were slightly MORE on top of my game I would have considered bug spray as well. 

Somehow the interval idea went out the window after mile 21 (which is *the* horrible marathon mile for mostly everyone who has run one). So then came the yelling and wondering and getting impatient. Within three miles of finish the people setting the pace who had things going so well for a while thought that maybe if we walked a mile we would be able to run the whole mile into the finish. Hello, we are dealing with people from the back who were doing okay with intervals but were not going to be able to sprint to the finish. One older gentleman even fell within two miles (I think he stepped off the paved part of the road funny but he was already having a hard time.) So you have the back yelling to go (or walk) and the front doing their weird idea and us going with the flow (for the most part, though a bit irritated they didn't stick with the 5:1 intervals which seemed to work so well.) 

People were getting a bit grumpy... 

Which was making me a bit grumpy. 

You really only know what is happening with about the 10 people in front of you and the 10 people behind you. You don't know if someone in the back is injured and barely holding on (I think there was more than one of these! You should see the blister pictures! Oh. My.). Likewise with the front. Why were we walking a mile? Maybe they had to.?The best idea would be to go with the flow. After 7 hours, what's another 10 minutes? There were 60 people you didn't know the status of, and a few people around them trying to manage communication. But there was a lot of yelling. Much too much yelling... 

A man a couple people in front of us kept joking that there was no world record and it was all a social experiment. Hilarious! 85 personalities, all tied together. (Heyyyy, the man has a name now! My new friend David said this funny stuff!)

It all came down to people and their own agendas, if people would remember we are there first to have fun and second, as a TEAM, it wouldn't have been so bad but it really does highlight how selfish a lot of people are. I guess that's why running isn't a team sport. Usually there is only one "winner". ;)

Within .2 of the finish the backed yelled up to slow down a little, and the front was going for it. By .15 people were angry... the finish is in site. One woman in the front said "Suck it up! Run!" And threatened to untether right there before the finish if anyone made her slow down. Can you believe this? Seriously... this really dampened the 'finish moment'... what if someone was injured? It was 85*, what about heat exhaustion? Seriously... this was beyond un-acceptable. The big hooray at the end? She killed it. I blame her, whomever she is. 

It was fun though, even more so in hindsight, I am glad I did it. It took a looooong time, but yay. I was so happy that I got to run by several of the people that I was with. I think we will be new running friends! Nothing like 7 hours together to start a new friendship. Go team! 

The previous record was from a bunch of runners in Germany, 73 of them, we ended up with a final tally of 82 who crossed the start and the finish together. I guess from here they submit the videos and pictures to Guinness and then we are notified if it's accepted and down in the books. (Here's the link to Germany's record.)

And there you have it. How I spent most of my Saturday! 

Awwwwe, me and the BRF. 

One of our new friends took this picture of us and our other new friends, we saw a lot of the back of their heads.

This is the new friend that took the picture of us all waiting at a potty. One, single, little, potty.

This was an all too familiar sight. 

Great pictures one of the leaders took after he dropped off. 

Look how cute we are! Besties after spending 7.5 hours together! Ashli, Sara and Ana.

The view from the very back.

Sara's view standing outside the port-o-john (which we did for 1.5 hours...) 

Sara's view running! 

Lots of fun group pictures!

Just chilling, enjoying the scenery. 

Which included buffalo.

New friends. (Ana was on the phone for this one.)

  Heading on to the loooooong causeway from Antelope Island. 

The picture Tricia took!

Great one from the front looking back!

 Is it a mirage? Hallucination? 

My heart rate monitor provides the most telling picture of all. Look at all that time in the fat burning zone! Do you think I burned a lot of fat?

This is a great chunk of data too. If we moved, with no potty breaks, it was a 6 hour marathon, which actually isn't terrible! Something to be proud of for sure! Freaking bladders. 

And some amazing scenery!

Great Salt Lake anyone?