Sena Wanawake at Headwaters

I'm recently returned from an amazing weekend of running and had to share. It hasn't been a great summer for me runningwise - convincing myself to go for a run after working out in the sun for nine hours is difficult even when the running is fun, but for some reason (boredom, being out of shape, lack of running buddies, who knows) I seemed to have lost whatever it is that makes running so enjoyable for me. I still don't know what it is, but I think I've found it again.

Despite my lack of training, last Thursday I set off for a 3 day, 222 mile cross country relay in south-central Montana, near Bozeman. It's called Headwaters, and it runs from Missouri Headwaters State Park to Hellroaring Creek, "the ultimate source of the Missouri River". The relay runs through an incredible range of locations: along the side of highways, down dusty two tracks, and even in a couple places on true trails. It goes across bridges, streams, and cattleguards; up and down mountains; through farmland, high-elevation sage/juniper deserts, forests, Montana-style sand dunes, and wildflower-filled alpine meadows. It begins at 4000 feet, and goes as high as 9500 on the third day. I've done it once before when I was in high school, and both times it was an incredibly demanding, incredibly enjoyable experience.

There were fourteen teams total, four of them forming a group from Missoula. I was on a team with 8 other women, including a couple running buddies from high school. We camped Thursday night with the other Missoula teams and woke up at 3:30 Friday morning (and every morning after) so we could make it to the start of the run by 5:30. That day is the longest day, and probably the hardest for me, though it was the flattest. My first leg started out with a pretty steep uphill, which I had to walk a lot of, then turned into a long, long downhill. This day was the lowest in elevation, only 4-5 thousand feet, but I was struggling a bit with the altitude on that first run. The second run I did was actually just a part of a leg called the Miler's Revenge, where seven of us each ran a mile. That was a lot of fun, but my last leg was late in the afternoon, so it was very hot, and the leg, though only three miles, was flat and exposed and extremely boring. Because of the heat, I had to stop with .8 to go and have a teammate finish for me, which was disappointing, the next day I got to run an extra 4.6 miles because another runner had accidently been assigned two legs that were too close together. I'd run that leg the other time I did the relay, and I really liked it then. It starts with half a mile of uphill, but the rest is a great long downhill into Nevada City (which is not in fact a city but rather an old west mining town now turned into a tourist trap. There's a similar town two miles down the road called Virginia City where I think people actually still live). It was significantly harder this time than the previous time, but still a great leg. That run was midway through the day, again without much shade (there aren't many trees in that part of Montana). I'd already run the first leg that morning, which was incredible. Again, we started at 5:30, so it was still dark and a bit chilly. This was my longest run of the weekend, 5.8 flat miles through some pretty farmland. As I was finishing up, the sun was beginning to rise above the mountains on the horizon. It's hard to get up so early, but totally worth it for a run like that.

By Sunday, the final day, I was so sore and tired, but I'd done 19 miles already and only had five more to go. We started out at 5 that morning because the start was closer to our campground, so even though I was the second leg the sun hadn't risen by the time I finished. That was my hardest leg of the day, two miles of nothing but steep uphill, but after all the downhill it felt pretty good. I walked for a little bit in the middle, but fortunately by the time the first car for the college boys team passed me (their team started behind us, and didn't actually pass us for another couple legs, but the car came by early) I was running again, so I didn't have to feel too embarrassed. My next run was part of a five-mile Miler's revenge, again a lot of fun and this time mostly downhill. My last run again was in the afternoon, but there was a breeze and it was a bit rollier than my run the first day, so two and a half miles was actually pretty comfortable. And then I was done- more than 24 miles in just 3 days!