Heels and Hills - 2009 Texas Independence Relay Team

Race Recap Report and Pictures
by Libby Jones (Team Co-Captain and Heels & Hills Co-Race Director)

I had always wanted to participate in one of those long-distance team relay races; my pal and Heels and Hills founder and co-race director Paula Robertson also had this on her bucket list. I had been friends the last couple years with the organizers of the Texas Independence Relay. If you aren't familiar with this event, now in its second year, it's a 40 leg, 203 mile relay that traces the path to Texas' independence from Gonzalez, Texas, east to Houston, Texas.

Like the dozen of other long distance relays like this one, there is a rule that makes it impossible for slower runners to participate. The relay requires an average pace of 10 minutes because the relay starts early Saturday and ends late Sunday and covers 200 miles, so you have to be at least that pace to complete the distance during that time.

I ran into the Race Directors, Jay and Joy, at the Houston Marathon Expo and we fell into a long discussion about that rule. After explaining that 60% of our Heels and Hills Half Marathon race participants are slower than 10 minutes per mile, they agreed to work with us to find a way for us to participate and without sacrificing any of the fun of the event, or having to skip some race legs. We went out to the Heels and Hills community in ONE email to past participants, and within a couple days, had formed a solid team of mostly strangers!

We didn’t realize how unusual of a team we even were! Heels and Hills fielded one of only 6 all-women teams out of a total of 158 teams participating in the event March 7-8. All 12 teammates had been involved in Heels and Hills in some way during the last 3 years. Whether this is a past participant, past volunteer, race founder, or race director, all of us had been touched by the mission of Heels and Hills to empower women in a friendly environment to get and stay active!

I wondered how a team of women who are mostly strangers would get along over the full weekend, shoved together in a van a lot of that time. Ages ranged from 26 up to the early 50s. Some were single and one of the group had 3 kids! Some were casual runners and then we had a gal who had just qualified for Boston! But we all felt in the end like we had made lasting friendships, which was beyond cool.

You have to have a team with an avg pace of faster than 10 min/mi to finish the race within the weekend. So how does a “slower” team complete the relay race within the timeframe? The plan - Start the race Saturday, March 7, at 7:04 am with those running a 9:40 pace (there was an opening in the staggered start at that time). We start runners at each leg of the race at a 9:40 pace schedule. Since our runners are slower than that generally, the person starting Leg 2, for example, would start their leg before the Leg 1 runner had finished. So there would be no "handoffs" at any of the relay exchange points. But every runner got the experience of hanging out with other teams and the locals and feeling safe with adequate police and volunteer support!

We arrived in Gonzalez, Texas in 3 different crews. One crew of Allison, Jennifer, and Kay all carpooled since they all live in Houston. Van #2 left

Dallas around 11 am, took their time, checked into the Friday night hotel, and was in Gonzalez by around 4 pm. Paula Robertson was the driver for Van #2 and had Sylvia, Mel, and Teresa with her.

Van #1 left Dallas about 3 pm. Angie McDonald was the driver for Van #1 with me navigating and had Anita, Amanda, and Sarah with us. Van #1 arrived in

Gonzalez last to complete our Heels and Hills team around 8:15 pm. We grabbed dinner while the others checked our team in at the TIR party / packet pickup going on in Gonzalez’ downtown square.

While Van #1 grabbed some dinner and beers after their late arrival, Van #2 and Houstonians worked on decorating the two vans to prepare for the weekend's adventure.

Everyone had a heeled pump with their name on it on each van. Kay gets all the credit for putting together the awesome decorations. We were very recognizable - other teams would later say "Oh, you guys were the ones with the heels on your van and real heels trailing off the rear bumper!"

Both vans headed to our 4 rooms at the hotel in Seguin, TX, and we all grabbed about 6 hours of sleep.

5:30 am – On the road! Our unconventional team was allowed into the relay late in the game, only about a month before the race, so no hotel rooms were available in the race start town of Gonzalez. This meant a 45 minute each way drive to our hotel in Seguin.

Way too early in the morning in Van #1 - Sarah, Amanda, Mel, Kay, and Jennifer. Angie (driving) and Libby (navigator) are in the front of the van.

The way the race worked, it had a staggered start based on your predicted finish time. Slower teams would start as early as 6 am and fast teams as late as 2 pm, and then the fast teams would chase everyone down to win it all.

Amanda breaks out into spontaneous dance before the race start while Anita looks on and laughs

While we wait for our turn to start, Mel flashes the peace sign to the camera. In the background, left to right, Sylvia, Allison, Teresa, Kay, and Jennifer.

A lot of teams were there hanging out when we arrived. An announcer would shout the team name that was starting in the next couple minutes. The photographer would take your picture. On the quarter hour they would fire an actual cannon – yes, a CANNON! The rest of the time the team captain (ME!) would get to hold a mallet and bang an official TIR gong!

I banged the gong at 7:04 am, and we were off! The first part is called the Prologue. This helped the team spirit because everyone ran it together. It was a 1.15 mile loop. Halfway into it you passed the Rotary Club who had set out a tent and was ready to party, with a giant smoker of great smelling BBQ that we were sad to pass! For competitive teams, they don’t count the prologue towards your finish time so everyone is encouraged to take it slow and enjoy the scenes. Texas flags lined the loop with signs from the locals welcoming us to Gonzalez.

After finishing the Prologue loop, I left the group to go run Leg 1. They meanwhile hurried back to the vans and hit the road to meet me at the next exchange point. The first 2 miles were uphill, way uphill. At this point, I was cursing the fact that in all my logistical planning, I didn't pay any attention to my leg's route, terrain, notes, difficulty ranking, elevation changes, or even length. I was tired from those first bad hills and the fact that I had of course additionally run the 1.15 mile Prologue right before and at a bit too fast of a pace for me. Along this leg, I passed some scary looking trailers that I don't think are inhabitable but I get the feeling they were occupied. I crossed three cattle guards during mile 3 (pits spanning the road with steel bars spaced out across it). I stepped gingerly across each one, not wanting to fall 3 miles into this 200-mile adventure. I also was chased by a rather fierce looking rat terrier who luckily got distracted by another runner coming up behind me. Lucky for this runner, the distraction gained us both enough time to both get past it, negating my plan to trip this other runner if the dog got too close.

Finished the last quarter mile on a somewhat gravelly road! Asphalt or dirt road, pick one! But instead I’m trying to look strong as I pull into view of the finish and the whole time I’m worried I’m going to slip on one of these random gravel pebbles underfoot and everyone will watch me fall on my face. Lovely. Good finish, and I feel great to see my team cheering me in!

I finished my leg and upon jumping into the van, immediately pulled up the race’s notes on that leg, which I had not read before hand… “Runner should be aware of dogs and will have to cross 3 cattle guards.” Hmm, exactly summed up my thoughts over those 4.26 miles. I had not expected that. Reminded the rest of the crew to get familiar with their routes.

Here’s Kay finishing Leg 2 (which ran straight down the highway) and Jennifer starting Leg 3.

Jennifer’s Leg 3 was ranked by the race as the most difficult leg in the 40 legs of the race. It was the longest at 8.78 miles and on hilly country dirt roads. We drove to the next exchange point and hung out in the car. This was when the first “tagging” incident occurred. A Rogue running team member (from their training program out of Austin) scrawled the team name on a corner of the back window with dry erase marker as they passed by. I immediately jumped out with a baby wipe and fixed that problem! It would not be the last time we were tagged. When we headed over to wait for Jennifer, we found she was already there! What had happened? She said she just felt really good and it turns out she ran it at an 8:45 pace, way fast for our team average! We sent Amanda on her way for Leg 4.

The end of Leg 5 was interesting because it finished at the Shiner brewery. Sadly the brewery was CLOSED. The leg exchange point was next to piles and piles of empty kegs. Mel finished this leg, and Sarah started Leg 6, which headed straight north up Highway 95.

Leg 7 was my second leg of the day, a few hours after Leg 1. I had already run 5.41 miles earlier, and this leg was 5.69 miles long. I headed off on a rather boring leg continuing straight north on Highway 95. It was overcast, nice running weather because it was a little cool, but the winds were 20 mph. Running along the shoulder of a country highway, 18-wheelers would pass by you and you’d feel all the breath sucked out of you for a sec in a big WHOOSH! That was interesting.

This was the seventh most difficult leg out of the 40 legs because of its hills. Long big uphills and downhills. The uphills were a doozy. I was happy with my pace in the end, it didn’t slip as bad as I expected considering I wasn’t feeling great. The whole team was there to cheer me in at the end of my leg because this was a van transfer point. Van #1 was going on break, and Van #2 was starting their relay legs.

It was 1 pm. Those of us in Van #1 drove ahead several legs to Weimar, where our next “on duty” Leg, #13, would be in 3 ½ hours. Driving through this tiny town, we only saw a couple food places. I pointed out that the plainly labeled “Bob’s Cook Shack” had several pickup trucks parked in front and you should always trust eating where the locals eat! It was a tiny place, only a few tables (the 7 of us took up half the restaurant!). The

entrance to the walk-in freezer was in the dining room area. A little grandmotherly woman jotted down each of our orders with the kitchen right behind her.

It was some good BBQ! I had a chopped brisket sandwich. Good barbecue sauce, not too sweet. Everyone loved their food.

While we were eating, a few of Bob’s buddies showed up and Bob came out to sit and talk with his friends. Before we left we thanked Bob for the food and convinced him to come outside for a picture in front of the restaurant sign. He was tickled pink and dragged out his assistant cook, Alex, to take their picture for us!

We found a nice green park area in downtown Weimar – some took naps in the van and others pulled out their sleeping bags and slept in the grass. A couple other teams were doing the same thing. Although we found out after a while that this green patch had us about 50 feet from where the trains came through the middle of the town!

At 4:30 pm, we were at the start of Leg 13, and Sarah was ready to go. The two vans reunited here as the change of resting and active vans occurred.

(To the right) Here’s Paula and me going through logistics for the next 12 hours or so. We have an atlas, Blackberry, and detailed spreadsheets of logistics that I had created in our arms here, as Sylvia surprised us with a quick picture.

At the next van transfer where Van #1 went back "on duty", we were 61 miles into the 203 mile event! At Weimar, the end of Leg 13, Sarah finished her leg and Kay started Leg 14. Weimar had gone all out and had one of the best welcomes we had on the route! They had a DJ with some fun rap / dance / party music. They had a welcome committee who had put together goodie bags and relay batons to give all of the Leg 13 finishers. They were so nice and represented their town so well!

About 6 pm, we arrived in Borden, Texas, yeah, the place the milk and Elsie the cow hail from. The exchange point was at the Borden Country Store. The guy directing the vans to park caught our attention – German accent and actual wooden clogs! Once we parked, we came back to him and had our picture taken with him.

Borden had a calf tethered to a tree there who seemed confused by all the commotion. There was a DJ playing music, people eating hamburgers and drinking beer. I had someone come up at this exchange and call me by name, which completely through me off. It was a DRC member who wanted to come over and introduce himself. Thank you, Matt, for saying hi! He was on a team named Los Armadillos.

This exchange was one of only a handful where the timing actually worked out perfectly that Kay was finishing Leg 14 at a perfect time to high five Jennifer who then started Leg 15.

As we headed back to the van, I stopped to say hi to some members of the “Dallas Does Houston” team – George Kempston, Wally Capps, and Jim Sampson.

By the way, it was getting dark at this point – it was a funny sight to drive for miles to the next relay exchange point and all along the way to see these runners. Decked out in reflective vest and/or belt, headlamps, flashlights, a handful of blinky lights all over them, glowsticks, anything to add some light and safety in what was very very dark roads and highways.

After another couple hours of relay legs, it was about 9 pm. We were getting ready for Sarah to start Leg 19. The volunteer at the start of the leg was yelling a warning. There was a long narrow bridge during this leg. If there was no police to escort you across when you got to the bridge, we were told that you had 3 choices: 1) wait for police, 2) have your van pick you up and drive you across, 3) swim across! Sarah was not accustomed to night running and then she also got the leg with the long scary dark narrow bridge. Poor Sarah!

At the end of Leg 19, it was time for Van #1 to go “off duty” again for a couple hours break. It was about halfway through the relay, 96 miles complete, 10:30 pm. Everyone was exhausted and the drive to the hotel in Sealy felt like it took forever. The time change was this weekend, so we all got confused for a bit about what time we were setting our alarms for, especially if your cell phone was automatically changing over at 2 am. The hotel was about 30-45 minutes to get to and then another 30 minutes to get to where our next relay leg is, since the hotel is located a little north of the route. So the time on the road meant we didn’t get a chance to get very much sleep, especially after a brief stop next to the hotel at a Whataburger to grab some food.

3:45 am, everyone got a little sleep, Jennifer in our Van #1 started Leg 27, and there were only SIXTY MILES left. I slept in a seat in the van for a couple hours because, in all my organizing and coordinating, I’d barely had any sleep since 5 am the previous day, and everyone was concerned I wouldn’t be able to make it through the 4 hours driving that van back to Dallas at the very end of the day. While I was out dead asleep, at the end of Jennifer’s leg, she shared that she had quite a scare when a car veered off the road at her, hit the rumble strips on the side of the highway, and veered back on the road. Scary.

5:15 am, I woke up to the loud music and hustle and bustle as we pulled in to the exchange point at the Houston Luke’s Locker. They were serving food and had a fun cowboy theme going while people shopped the store.

As the legs went on, it was getting very warm on this Sunday. It was in the 80s with no clouds and the wind had died down a lot. A little before 7 am, Teresa started her back-to-back legs, #31 and #32.

Teresa was ahead of pace and looking strong at the end of her first leg. But it was starting to get SO hot. She called me about 11 miles into the 13 1/2 and said that she was starting to feel dehydrated, not feeling good at all. We were waiting at the end of her leg when that phone call came. We immediately all jumped back in the van and someone grabbed a map and we drove back on the course to find a spot to connect with her quickly and another person grabbed a cold water bottle from the cooler. No discussion occurred, we all just moved into action! And two minutes after she called, we'd driven a couple miles and were all standing there when she turned the corner with a water bottle in hand, cheering. It was just so touching how we all wanted to look out for one another when we'd all just met for the first time a day and a half ago!

At 10:30 am, we get to Leg 35, my last leg, at 5.18 miles long. This is designated the Team Captain leg. They encourage the Team Captains to run it because it’s a very pretty leg through Houston’s Memorial Park where you get to enjoy the Houston skyline as you come into downtown. Before my leg starts, I go say hi to Suresh and Brian Shah, past DRC members and now Houston residents who I see are volunteering. I never run on dirt trail and the first couple miles are mostly that. It’s hot and I’m working super hard to keep the pace. After 3 miles, I realize that I’m running so hard, I’m not getting the benefit of the Team Captain leg. I’m missing all the beauty of this relay leg. So I think for a minute and I stop and I walk. Yep, I walk the whole next mile. With a stupid silly grin on my face. Reflecting on the weekend, on my new friends, on this adventure, on the beauty of the pond by the trail I’m on, the public art along the path, the water gardens of downtown. It really was a lovely route. I enter downtown and run the last 1/3 of a mile. But I don’t feel bad or regret that mile walked or I would have missed some of the experience!

We meet up with Van #2 at the exchange at the end of Leg 37. The moment to reconnect with the rest of the team is nice.

Paula, who had just run Leg 36 - you can tell looking at her how hot it is outside

Our van is now “off duty” until the end so we stop at a Subway on the path to the end of the race to get some sandwiches. Once we’re at the San Jacinto Monument, where the relay comes to an end, there’s the spot where you can see your last runner, finishing Leg 40, coming down the path, and teams are cheering and taking pictures and then beginning the Epilogue. The Epilogue is the last 0.38 miles each team does together to get to the foot of the monument, where everyone receives their finisher medal. Those of us in Van #1 have a couple hours so we rest, organize and pack up belongings, clean up the inside of the rental van, and take off the outside van decorations.

4:30-ish, the whole team is together when Anita comes into view in her bright yellow shirt. We cheer her in, loud as we can.

Right there at that finish line, I see Dallas runners and DRC members Keith and Judy Adabie, Natasha Murray, and there’s Jason Ortiz finishing that team’s Leg 40. Cool timing to see them at the finish! Our team takes a bunch of pictures and heads up to the monument. It’s a mix of high enthusiasm and “are we done yet?” It’s a great, fulfilling moment. But it’s 80-something degrees in full sun outside, we’ve all had very little good rest, we’ve been mostly eating snacks and junk food for the last 48 hours, so we’re all tired.

We get our finisher medals. The finisher medal is heavy and it’s cool that it kinda has a base so it can stand on a desk on its own. We wait in a line of teams to get our official picture taken by the photographer. We all sign a giant TIR poster every person in the whole race is signing. They tell us we’re allowed 4 hot pizzas, which sounds good, but then we learn it’s a 30 minute wait and no one in interested in sticking around. At this point, we all just want to head home. We’re just exhausted.

As a generally slow team, our runners would get passed a lot during each of their legs. Everyone was always so nice. We would all shout out encouraging words to the passer or passee.
People would jump in and help anyone that appeared to be in trouble. If you needed something and didn’t have it, all you had to do was ask and another team would pitch in.
A ton of logistics and runners and vans everywhere but people were just exceptionally courteous to one another.
During Leg 7, one woman who appeared to be support for another team, asked each runner passing by if they needed water, were they doing okay, etc.
As a team of mostly strangers, in circumstances like this race, it doesn’t take long to feel a protectiveness towards each other, and it really built friendships

If you haven’t done one of these races, I highly suggest you do. You will not be disappointed. And if you are kinda interested in knowing more when the time comes for me to start organizing the co-ed and all female teams we’ll be putting together for next year, send me a message so you’re on my radar, and I can follow up with you again later.