March 2020 Monthly Running Challenge

On Saturday I participated as part of a 2-person relay team in Peyton’s Wild and Wacky 50K. The race is held in a park in Mt. Pleasant, SC. This year made the sixth annual running. The couple who organize the race put it on in honor of their 9-year old son (Peyton) who passed away unexpectedly in 2013. The boy ran with his mom and dad (his dad is a running coach), always encouraging to everyone and camped in this park as a Boy Scout. Even though Peyton was a speedy runner he would slow down and run with the slower runners. What makes the race wild and wacky is that it is composed of 10 x 5ks and you run a 5K every hour on the hour. Everyone started their first 5K at 8:00 am and no matter how speedy you complete that first 5K, you can’t start the next one until 9:00 am and so it goes until the last 5K is run at 5:00 pm. The race is a sell-out every year.

There were several of us traveling down from northeast Tennessee. A couple of guys were doing a 2-person relay and some other girls from my morning running group were doing a 5-person relay. Mid-day Friday, six of us loaded in a mini-van and headed out on the 5-hour drive. We rented a house in Wild Dunes for the weekend. A couple of friends were driving their truck and leaving early Friday morning so they graciously took our camp chairs, pop-up tent and changing tent and set it up for us Friday evening. The atmosphere at this race is very relaxed and fun. Everyone sets up tents in the park and hangs out in between the running their legs. And food! They fed us all day long. This year, for hygiene purposes all snacks were individually packaged. A food truck serving BBQ catered lunch and there was a coffee truck there with free coffee. You could also purchase the fru-fru coffee drinks so I had an iced mocha at one point. I couldn’t stomach the thoughts of eating BBQ and then going back out to run shortly thereafter but a lot of people handled it fine.

I ran the race in 2017 as a solo participant and this time I was a little worried about having more down time in between the 5ks. Although I would only be running 25K instead of the full 50K, I was afraid I would get stiff in between the legs. All went well. The temperature was between 65F – 70F all day and breezy. Being in SC though it was pretty humid. I sat down some when I was “off” but we also played frisbee, cheered on other runners, visited with friends and people-watched so the time passed quickly. A group set up next to us were from the Mission 22 organization which raises awareness of veterans suicide and at the end of each leg would do 22 push-ups. Another group of firefighters suited up and ran each leg with a tank on their back.

Having fun in between legs


I did Legs 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9. Due to some flooded trails, they changed the course this year. In the past it has been one 5K loop but this year there were several out and back sections. And dogs! A lot of people brought their dogs on leashes and all of them were well-behaved. The dogs weren’t allowed on the course so they just hung out at camp.



I’m grateful they didn’t cancel the race. Even though it was a decent sized crowd of runners everything was outside. There were hand-washing stations and hand sanitizer available. It was a beautiful day to be outside. I wasn’t too sore or tired the next day. I would definitely do this race again.

Ready to head out for lap 9