After achieving the age group national record in the outdoor 4 x 800 relay last summer, my relay team was thirsty for a sequel. We noticed the indoor record was doable, and thought if we all could stay healthy we would take a crack at it in Chicago.

Of course, as a masters athlete it is that “staying healthy” part that is the trickiest. Wendy dealt with an injury in January, I missed most of February with a nasty bout of bronchitis, and Shannon missed an entire six weeks of running leading up to race day. We won’t talk about Aseel’s denial of a foot injury 🙂

Somehow, we managed to arrive at the starting line in one piece (after six hours in a car.) After a nice warm up, we toed the line. I was leadoff, handing off to Shannon, to Wendy, to our anchor Aseel.

Things went smooth and uneventful. I took off behind two rabbits but they came back to me early. I was able to establish a dominant lead, and the others continued to open up. We ended up winning our heat and our age group, in 11:05. This broke the record by 6+ seconds. There were several other records that went down in our event, including a world record!

The feeling you get after conquering a big, scary goal like this is indescribable. You hear about addicts always chasing that first high, and I guess this is the healthy version of that. We were on cloud nine after the race, frolicking in the snow with our baton and an American flag, full of childlike wonder and pure joy.

When you look at our overall time, it’s not extremely impressive. The world record is well under ten minutes. But being able to string together a team of 45+ year old women living in a town the size of Lexington, KY, who can pull this off is an amazing feat. And mark my words when I say “The best is yet to come.”