South Valley Running Club's 2008 team celebrates at the end of The Relay. TOP ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT: Ken Oliver, Gretchen Schrock, Rich Benner, Barbi Ceballos, Allan Abrams, Walter Sasaki, Craig Lore. BOTTOM: Anthony Rosso, Kim Moyano, Jorn Jensen, Gar Chan, Jennifer Fiorello.
MORGAN HILL -- South Valley Running Club president Allan Abrams was jogging with Carrey Dent when he mentioned The Relay, a 199-mile race from Calistoga to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk that pits about 200 teams of 12 people against each other for more than 24 hours straight.
Abrams and his SVRC mates run it every year.
Dent wanted in right away.
"I'm always up for new running challenges," said Dent, 22, a Morgan Hill native. "It sounds pretty crazy, but everyone says it's a lot of fun. It's like a big sleepover."
Instead of sleeping, though, they run. Each team member jogs three of the 36 legs, rotating with their teammates who follow in decorated vans and SUVs. Because the race is continuous, each runner has to run at night.
"The first year I did it, I had to run in the mountains in pitch blackness," Gilroy's Kim Moyano, 43, said. "There was absolutely no light except for the moon -- that was kind of scary. I thought some bear would come out and attack me."
Abrams, 52, is a three-year relay veteran.
"The comraderie is the best part," he said. "It's just a lot of fun spending 27 hours or so cooped up in a van with five fantastic other runners."
That is the sales pitch Abrams gives to his Running Club mates six months before The Relay each year. The entry fee is $960 per team, and each team has to raise a minimum of $600 for the event's beneficiary, Organs R Us.
In more ways than one, The Relay is demanding. But SVRC never has trouble filling the roster.
"Every year, I get a certain percentage of people that want to return because it's so much fun," Abrams said. "The amount of people from our club gets bigger every year. We have several alternates. Next time, we might have two teams."
For this year's race, which runs May 2-3, South Valley's contingent includes Abrams, Dent and Moyano, plus Rich Benner, Anthony Rosso, Gar Chan, Barbi Ceballos, Matt Edgar, Jennifer Fiorello, Stacey Thornburg, Ralphie Martinez and Walter Sasaki. Several of them ran for last year, when SVRC finished an impressive 14th out of roughly 220 teams.
"We were so happy and so proud of ourselves when it was over," Moyano said. "You're kind of bummed when it's over, too. It goes by fast. But all you want to do is go home and go to sleep."
The Relay is as much a race as it is a fun run. One of the best parts is decorating the team's ride.
"Last year, we had like a sharks and skulls motif," Abrams said. "This year, we might do something with paintings and lights -- we always need those."
Scott J. Adams Scott J. Adams covers Morgan Hill sports for South Valley Newspapers. Send him an email or call him at 779-4106.
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