Austin Marathon Relay

I participated in the Austin Marathon Relay yesterday with Team ANC, a group of friends from our church, Austin New Church. The race benefited Junior Achievement of Central Texas, which provides educational resources to teach financial literacy by local business and community volunteers that meet with over 16,000 area students each year.

It was such a fun race. This was my first relay, but it was easy to figure out. The length of the race was a marathon, 26.2 miles, broken into five legs (12K, 10K, 10K, 5K, 5K). You could run the entire race yourself or have anywhere from two to five runners join together. Our friend Adam ran the first leg (12K) of the race and the last leg (5K) of the race. Susie ran the second leg (10K) of the race. I ran the third leg (10K) of the race and Jessica ran the fourth leg (5K). Her husband Adam brought it home for us. And because there was so much time between legs, people were hanging out all over Auditorium Shores having a grand time socializing. There were lots of activities for children so it was a good event for families.

The race route was really neat. We ran across Riverside Drive at Auditorium Shores over the South First Bridge, up Congress Avenue around the Capitol then back down Congress west on Cesar Chavez. We turned around at the top of the hill on Cesar Chavez almost to Mopac-Loop One then back to the South First bridge and down Riverside to the finish. It's so neat to run up the middle of Congress Avenue and around the Capitol. The weather started out nice but got hot fast. But it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed finishing the 10K leg, joining a group from my church to help a great organization and hanging out with friends getting to know them better. Roger was our official team photographer and he was all over the place getting photos of us at the start-finish to hand off the team wristband to the next runner and trying to catch each of us at least once out on the race route. He walked a lot and got some great shots as a result. You can see them all by clicking on the photo above.

Also at the race a Guinness World Record was broken. It was so crazy cool! A new record was set for the fastest marathon relay. Of course this race held the record from last year but they broke it by five minutes. It was an amazing race to see so many different participants, young and old, experienced and non-experienced, amateurs and professionals, all out there for the same cause. I hope next year we can have more than one team participating in this race. It would be fun to cheer on even more friends.