This past weekend, I participated in the Reno-Tahoe Odyssey, and this year was a big one for me. I have now run all 36 legs and have been inducted into the Circle of Fame.

For those who aren’t familiar, the RTO is a two-day, 178-mile relay running race. It starts in Reno, goes through Verdi, up and over Dog Valley into Stampede, across Prosser Dam, through Truckee, along Highway 89 to Tahoe City, continues on 89 to South Lake Tahoe (going up and over Emerald Bay), up and over Kingsbury Grade to Genoa, through Carson City, up Gold Hill into Virginia City, back into Reno and finishes right back where it started. Are you exhausted just reading that? 

The race is typically run by teams of 12. The teams split into two vans, so while one van is running, the other van can rest and replenish. There are 36 legs so each runner takes three. Each runner runs a total of 11 to 18 miles. There are ultra teams with only six runners and there are even two superhumans that have completed the whole solo. 

The first year I did this race, a RTO veteran said to me, “You don’t sleep, you don’t eat well and it’s so much fun,” and that basically sums it up. It is simultaneously the worst time and the most fun and I recommend it to everyone who has even the slightest interest in running. 

This year marked my 9th year of participating. My first year was in 2013, when I was in my early 20s and I have to say, it’s a lot easier to recover from lack of sleep in your 20s than your mid-30s. 

Before this year, I had competed on 4 12-person teams before making the shift to ultra-teams so I was able to cross off the legs faster. While I did love the added challenge and attention of running on an ultrateam, I began to burn out on the race. I took a few years off but the final set of legs was haunting me (which happened to be the longest legs and ranked the second most challenging) and I knew I needed to bite the bullet and get them done. So, when a friend reached out asking me to join his 12-person team, I knew this year was the year. 

I was runner 11, so my first leg was 5.2 miles from Olympic Valley to Tahoe City. The leg followed the bike path along the Truckee River. It was my shortest and my most scenic leg. I also ran it at a reasonable hour of the day, at 4 p.m. 

After our van finished our first set of legs at Homewood, a team member’s wife brought us fried chicken, which we absolutely devoured before going down to the lake to skip rocks. We drove to Kahle Park to take a quick nap before getting ready to run again around 10 p.m. 

My next leg was a 6.1-mile straight shot from Genoa to Jacks Valley Volunteer Fire Station in Carson City at 1:15 a.m. After our van was done with that set of legs, we went to a room our team had reserved at the Carson City Super 8 where we showered and slept. Until about 6 a.m. when we got up to go meet our other van in Virginia City. 

My final leg was 6.9 miles through South Reno and this is when I stopped having fun. About two miles into the run on a completely flat sidewalk on Longely Drive, someone came up next to me and asked if we could run together. I was so excited to make a running friend that I stopped paying attention to where I was stepping. I kicked a rock and fell hard on the decorative rocks that lined the sidewalk. My knee, arm and jaw all took a hit. My new friend (whose name I never caught) checked to make sure I didn’t have a concussion before running off and leaving me to gather my shame. Another van, who had seen “the incident” as I’ve now been referring to it, and stopped to give me water. While I wasn’t seriously injured, I was shaken up, embarrassed and a little sore, making the last 5 miles of the run a slog. It also made the beer at the finish taste that much better, a beer I drank from my “Circle of Fame” stein. 

I could write so much more about this race; about my favorite and least favorite legs, the best and worst places I’ve slept, the funniest things that happened over nine years of competing, and as cliché as it is to say, the friends I’ve made along the way.