Devilish Fun

For many years we've come together on the second Sunday in January as Kirby's Angels and taken Holland by storm--pun intended-- by completing the Frostbite Marathon Relay (FMR). Most do not understand this tradition, but if you've ever partaken in this event, you get it. If you haven't participated, I'd recommend you sign up next time you're drinking, or at the very least become friends with Frostbite Marathon Relay on Facebook so you can live vicariously through others.  

Over the years, we've run in unseasonably warm weather in tank tops and shorts while joking about the spring like weather and lack of snow while drinking pina coladas.  We've also come dangerously close to losing limbs due to unforeseen circumstances and the windchill. We've run in weather that most people avoid at all costs and we've even tried to bribe Mother Nature for some decent running weather. We've pretty much done it all! And today we ran through the most crazy, ass, shit-weather and had the absolute best time despite the hurricane force winds we had to battle!  

Here's how things unraveled this time.  First of all, we had to get a new name because Kirby has officially retired from running.  This was emotional for our team because Kirby was truly the glue that held us together or perhaps the peanut butter that kept these squirrely ladies in some semblance of order!  I mean our team was named after him so his retirement was a HUGE deal.  So we invited Kirby over for good luck last night during our team dinner and voila, we did awesome today so thank you Kirb for being you and for all the great memories. I guess we should all sign up for a bike race with you this year or something...

Kirby's Angels aka Dan's Devils aka Squirrely Sistas

Renaming our team seemed like an impossible feat until we recruited a professional driver (willing to work for free) named Dan. Once we did that it became apparent we had become Dan's Devils! I think Dan was actually our MVP this year. He didn't run any actual miles but he drove like an undercover FBI agent being chased by the bad guys during a blizzard.  Oh and by the way the FBI agent doesn't get caught either he actually busts up a drug deal gone bad along the way while saving precious babies.

Dan the MVP of the game 

Our outfits were supposed to be red, but given the ambient air temperatures and the ridiculous windchill we had to put extra layers on and nobody actually ended up running with red on the outermost layer of clothes.  Fun fact I found these sweatpants in the Goodwill pile and rescued them.  There are actual devils on them and I ran the entire race in them!  Also noteworthy about my wardrobe was the fact that I wore an extra layer of a past race sweatshirt with a big pocket into which I tucked an energy ball from the smorgasbord at the church... Being that it was me tucking food in my pocket this isn't that unusual. I've got a reputation for traveling with granola bars, dark chocolate and avocados in my pockets so a little energy ball isn't that big of a deal!  However, it made it the whole way and was frozen solid when I finished which was a small miracle!  Best of all, it was delicious this morning for breakfast!!

Red devils on my legs!

Can you see the devils?

Teresa preparing for the start!

So here's the highlights from Dan's Devil's 2024 Frostbite Marathon Relay.  We all agreed that the professional driver was a team member we never knew we needed, but now that we know I don't think we can ever go back to driving ourselves around Holland.  The hot tub soak the night before was key to our impressive performance today.  Also we probably should have brought a pitchfork with us. I mean what kind of devil doesn't have a pitchfork?!?  Everyone also agreed my husband was super funny at our team dinner and he made us laugh out loud which still makes my heart happy as I am writing this.  We also agreed that spending time together was the absolute best and we should do it more often. Mird still makes the best pudding shots and my carbonara truly can't be beat. I'm thinking we should enter a cooking contest next, but I'm really trying to stay focused...Sidenote I am super thankful I am partly Italian and even more thankful that my Italian Granny and my mom taught me at a young age that in order for Italian food to turn out you MUST drink wine while you're cooking it.  Finally, we were all a little closer to God today thanks to Gibson Church and the kindness, compassion and encouragement we received from their congregation today.  You took such good care of us!

Starting line FMR. Teresa is preparing for a good time! She is relentless, full of positivity and light and totally killed it coming in faster than expected!  

The first thing we did after we sent Teresa off was we stopped at a gas station to use their bathroom, gas up, and buy more handwarmers! You know basically everything we should have done before the race started!  Once again, Teresa did awesome and was finished in no time flat with a smile on her face.  Does she ever not smile?!  She and Amy then teamed up for leg 2 because we decided to partake in creative relay marathon running which  basically means we rearranged the legs to meet our needs: keep us all safe, have company if we wanted it and most importantly to get us to the chili and beer asap.  We were tired of sitting in the poorly heated overflow tent at the after party and we were determined to get there at 11 when the chili would be ready!!  Our big idea to create a perfect race experience worked flawlessly and we will likely never run the relay exactly as intended again because our creative version was WAY better.  It was liberating to just throw the game plan out the window and make up a plan that worked for us.  Don't worry I didn't actually throw anything out the window that's totally illegal and I love Mother Earth way too much to litter. What we did do was change our mind enough times about what legs everyone was running that I had no idea what I was actually doing until I finished running. It's ok. I often wander aimlessly for days on end so I was well prepared for this scenario. I figured it out. It's what I do. I figure things out and once in awhile I run so I am happy. 

Teresa & Amy took leg 2 by storm 

Look who I "ran" into while running my made up leg of the race. I like to call it leg 3.5 which was mostly legs 3 & 4 combined minus the last couple miles because we had already run more than 26.2 miles and we were really hungry, extremely tired and incredibly cold. The moral to this story is if you ever need help planning anything, you probably don't want to ask any of us for help unless you're looking to get confused, lost, frozen, or  ripped off.  On the other hand, if you are looking for a good time you should definitely give us a call!

the actual relay course.  

Since Mird and Courtney wanted company while they ran, we went ahead and got creative again.  They ran leg number 3 together and I ran leg 3.5 about thirty minutes after they started leg 3.  I did stick around to wish them well and Dan snapped this photo before they took off together!  Oh and one more thing during down time in the van, I also created enough group texts and resultant confusion from said group texts that I may actually get kicked off the team in which case I will be looking to form a new relay team next year...stay tuned and send your running resume my way if you're interested.

Smile Dan's taking our picture!

I finished leg 3.5 and celebrated with the XL Men's sized post run pudding shot. It was the special in Vern's van today.

So a year from now we hope to be running as Dan's Devils in the Frostbite Marathon Relay. If not, then there's surely an epic adventure elsewhere perhaps in one of the states we are yet to run. Because Frostbite Marathon Relay is what we do the 2nd Sunday in January unless we're doing something equally adventurous and devilishly fun!