Introducing the 2009 Rosie Ruiz Fan Club

Welcome, Fans of the Fan Club!

We arrived in Sugar Hill, NH last night at 10:30 and quickly got settled into 5 rooms of a B&B that would under other circumstances be called romantic. For those of you new to the race, an orientation:

Reach the Beach is a 200-mile, 24-hour (in our case, more like 30-hour), round-the-clock relay race. This is the 3rd year the Rosie Ruiz Fan Club has made an appearance in the race, albeit with a slightly different membership each time. Rosie Ruiz, as you may know, is the woman who famously won the Boston Marathon in 1980 with an assist from the Boston subway system.

You can read more about the race here and about our honorary team member, Rosie, here.

And now, our team! These are the brave/naive souls who will be taking us through New Hampshire this year:

In Van 1, the Orange Line, we have (in order of runner):
Judson Lew, Weldon Johnson, Zak Megeed, Barbara Farell, Ali Crum*, and Tammy Feldman.

Van 2, the Green Line, is:
Chris Dawson*, Joe Simmons, Kathy Ball-Toncic*, Leslie Martin, Rodrigo Canales*, and Erica Dawson*

* means the person has run this thing before. Note there is only one * on the Orange Line. That means that the non-*s are basically running the show over there with no experience of van transitions, night running, etc. (Of course they also have no experience of nearly missing the transition point or sleeping in a room so dirty you wouldn't use the bathroom, so it all evens out I suppose).

Sadly missing from our team this year is my sturdy co-captain (whether he knows it or not!), Matt Spiegel. Mend well Matt and we hope you are back next year. I mean REALLY hope.

I can't go into the full educational experience for those of you new to the race, so feel free to look through posts from previous races on our blog (Spet. 2007 and Sept 2008) to discover what it's all about and why we would need Christmas lights and window markers.

We will try to keep you all posted on our progress here as the race goes on. Our start time this year is 12:40. It's now 7:09, so that gives us enough time for Barbara to barely make the start line ; )

Let the van decorating commence!