Every year Naval Base Guam host a 60 mile relay race in order to help raise funds for the Navy Ball. This year Matthew, some of the guys that work in his kennel, and some other guys in the MA division (Master at Arms or 'the police') signed up as a team. The teams can be as little as 2 and as many as 10 people and there are coed teams, all male teams, and all female teams. There are even a few that run the race completely by themselves! All 60 miles! Those people start at a different time than the teams but run the same route.
The route went all around the Naval Base and the central/southern part of the island. It is split into 20 different legs where the legs could be 2 miles or 5 miles, uphill, downhill, through the woods or on the road. It is all over the place! Matthew had legs 10 and 20. The middle of the race and the last leg in the race.
This was good for me that Matthew had the middle leg first because the whole race got started at 3:30 in the morning! I was not getting up that early! But Matthew did to cheer his team on and he had a great time. I went out around 7:30 to the location where Matthew would be finishing up his leg of the race. I was able to get some pictures at that location, although they are not very good because of the crowd. There was a local flea market going on at the same time.
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The route went all around the Naval Base and the central/southern part of the island. It is split into 20 different legs where the legs could be 2 miles or 5 miles, uphill, downhill, through the woods or on the road. It is all over the place! Matthew had legs 10 and 20. The middle of the race and the last leg in the race.
This was good for me that Matthew had the middle leg first because the whole race got started at 3:30 in the morning! I was not getting up that early! But Matthew did to cheer his team on and he had a great time. I went out around 7:30 to the location where Matthew would be finishing up his leg of the race. I was able to get some pictures at that location, although they are not very good because of the crowd. There was a local flea market going on at the same time.
This is right after he finished his leg of the race.
After he finished this leg it was time to wait for his team mates to complete their own legs. We made a little pit stop at the top of Nimitz Hill to over look the downtown city of Tumon. Here are a few pictures of that view.
That is the Naval Hospital.
The building that is closes to the bottom of the picture is the high school, Guam High School.
This is Tumon Bay where all the tourist spots are and the high dollar hotels.
After our little stop to admire the view, Matthew went with his team to cheer them on the rest of the race. I went back to the house to get breakfast and let Pluto out. I was only able to hang out at the house for about 40 minutes before I had to head down to the finish line at the Inarajan Pools which are about 30 minutes away from the house.
I got to the finish line and there was one individual runner finishing the race! He was beat! I sat out with the volunteers for a while and watched the road. Saw the first place team runners come in before the bottom dropped out of the sky and it was pouring raining. I took cover in the car. About 30 minutes later Matthew came running in soaking wet! This was not the ordinary rain for 5 minutes and its over, this rain kept on coming and was flooding out the roads. They couldn't even cook the end-of-the-race meal because the rain was so heavy. So they had to give out the medals and shirts and then basically tell the teams to have safe travels getting back to the base in the mess.
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This is Matthew and his team. They came in Third Place!!
The drive home was not a fun one. We had to drive around and though many large puddles in the middle of the road while it was still raining. But, we did finally make it home safe and sound without killing our car! :)
Needless to say the rest of our Sunday was pretty much a relax day after all of that activity! Matthew had a great time with his team running the race and he said that he wants to do it again next year. Needless to say, I will not be joining him on a team as far as the running goes but I will always be there to cheer him on!!
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