MC200 eve: Let the butterflies commence

I'm writing this on the eve of the start of the Madison to Chicago 200 Mile Relay that runs through this Saturday. Over 200 teams leave Madison, Wi. early Friday morning and run through the night to finish at Montrose Harbor on Chicago's lakefront.

As mentioned in a previous post I'm runner #2 of my 12 person team (6 guys/6 girls). Our name is Team Shenanigans #148! Catchy name, eh? I'm looking forward to meeting everyone at the hotel in Madison, Wi. this evening. We'll be spending over 30 hours straight together as we make our way to Chicago.

Each runner on the team is assigned to run 3 legs along the route varying different mile distances each. Once the runner finishes his/her leg, a new runner picks up where they left off by trading an arm band "baton". This continues through "Van Tranfser Areas" where fresh runners are dropped off from one of two vehicles to continue pushing forward. We run through the night refreshing runners as we go until all 12 have completed their assigned legs.

It's a crazy system that's carefully choreographed to accomplish the end result- Montrose Harbor in Chicago! At an average 9 minute pace for our team, we should expect to arrive in Chicago around 3:30 pm on Saturday.

I'm a bit nervous. I've never done anything like this before but fell in love with the challenge. I figure my first leg will start around 10:30 a.m. at Olbrich Park in Madison for 6.2 miles. My next leg begins at Carroll College in Waukesha, Wi. for 3.5 miles. My last leg is at Beatrice Jones School in Racine for 6.5 miles.

I hope to be sending Tweets through the entire event and poke in on Facebook as well. Follow me at http://twitter.com/jessejstreet or use the hash tag #mc200. I'll probably send some photos to this blog as well.

Have a great weekend friends!