1st leg

Frank Lara

Did you look at your splits?

“Um, not really. I looked at them a little, but they didn’t mean anything - I was just trying to not to lose the guys ahead of me.”

It looked like you were having a hard time with your sash?

“I was debating whether or not I should sacrifice my time to like, tighten it so that everyone else in my team would have it, but ultimately I didn’t... You can like change the length on it - people on other teams were doing it before - but I thought, yeah that’s fine, it’s not gonna be a big deal... Although the wind helped keep it on for half of it, and the other half blew it off me...'

2nd Leg

Maggie Montoya

“It was an awesome event at a beautiful time of year. I hope we can come back for this in the future. The race was a cool set up, though everybody sorta ran solo the whole race. So it’ll be awesome in future years with a lot more teams to be a bit more packed up for more of the race. Hopefully next year Roots also figures out how to wear a sash!”

3rd Leg

Austen Dalquest

“The wind was a bit brutal, but it was fun. It's good to be out there. I went out really hard - I just wanted to put myself in the hurt box. Grateful for the opportunity to be out here and get after it!

'It's nerve racking, but its fun. I miss the race jitters for sure. Yeah it’s good to be back in that zone. I’m learning to be there again.

'I tucked it (the sash) in a few times, and then let it hang a few times... It's all good though, it’s all part of the game, everyone has to deal with it.”

4th Leg

Alia Gray

“It was an honor to be part of the inaugural event of what I hope will become a really rich tradition in subsequent years. Normally, our individual racing opportunities dominate competitive calendars, but the ability to work toward something as a collective team is a bit more rare - and really invigorating. I had never run a relay of this format before, and I could only imagine how the excitement would continue to amplify with even more teams and spectators, when we can safely welcome them back into our sport.”

5th leg

Will Cross

“It was awesome as a post-collegiate to be able to experience a race format that was centered around the team aspect of the sport again. The combination of the fall weather and atmosphere of the race definitely brought me back to the college cross country days. While traditional road races are often shared experiences for us as a team, targeting similar goal races, it was cool to be able to impact each other's races rather than just celebrate them together. I hope that this event will be back next year and hopefully we will be in a place where more teams are able to compete safely.”

6th leg

Alexis Zeis

“Yesterday was really fun! Even though the weather was not on our side, especially the wind, it was still a cool experience. It was nice to have something to train for during these hard times but it was even better to train for something when you will be competing as a team. I haven’t ran a relay since college, so getting to do something like this and represent the Japanese Culture was pretty amazing. I do hope they plan to do this again in the future because I feel like we would get a lot of groups out here and make it even more interesting!”