Reach The Beach Relay A Great Success

This past weekend I participated in a most unique outdoor running event. Reach The Beach (http://www.rtbrelay.com/) is a 209-mile relay race across the mountains of New Hampshire. It starts in Franconia Notch (location of the since departed “Old Man in The Mountain”) and ends at Hampton Beach. The standard team consists of 12 people, each running about 18 miles in 3-leg increments. The race starts during the day on Friday, and continues throughout the night. Most teams finish Saturday afternoon to a big BBQ at Hampton Beach. 429 teams participated.


If you’re a serious runner, you need to find a way to get yourself into this event! This event is for charity and pure fun. There are no professionals. No prize money. Just people running for the challenge, team camaraderie, and fun. You can run 5 Ks, marathons, and everything in between, but this relay race poses special challenges that standard races do not. There are several challenges that have nothing to do with the actual running. First, you have to deal with living out of a van for 36 hours. You have to deal with a severe lack of sleep. I was able to get 30 minutes of sleep throughout the race. You have to find a way to eat. This is a special challenge since stores and restaurants are not readily available at 3 AM in rural New Hampshire. You also have to deal with port-o-potties. Race rangers strictly enforce a port-o-potty-only policy. These challenges add to the difficulty of the running.
As far as the running goes, this course is not a standard long-distance course. Most distance courses are relatively flat. This course is purposely not flat. The course takes twists and turns to take you over mountains. Running at night is also a special challenge. This is not running on the sidewalk lit by streetlights. This is mostly running on back roads with only the moon (and your head lamp) to help you see. The race continues rain-or-shine. Luckily, we were able to avoid rain throughout the entire race. However, temperatures did dip to 40 degrees F at night, and rose to abound 70 degrees F during the day.

The race was a great challenge. It felt great to hit that finish line. I am looking forward to participating again next year.