By Bremen Leak
The Moab Half. The Rex Lee Run. The Salt Lake City Marathon. Where else would you go to promote a brand-new relay race stretching 170 miles through the most fantastic landscapes of the Wasatch Range?
BYU students Dan Hill and Tanner Bell have been camping out at finish lines to spread the word about the Wasatch Back Relay, set to run June 18 and 19.
Teams of 12 runners will race from Logan to Park City in 24 hours. Each team member will run three legs of three to six miles each.
“If you spread the word, people will want to do it,” said Bell, a senior from Farmington majoring in information technology management. “It”s just such a great idea. Everybody”s stoked about it.”
The course winds past seven Utah lakes through several valleys and mountain passes as well as along sights from the 2002 Winter Olympics. It ends at Park City, where Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband will perform a concert for runners and friends.
Bell”s neighbor and friend, Hill, a senior majoring in economics, said one team has named itself “The Defending Champions” of the inaugural event. Other teams have made up unique names as well.
“With a marathon, or even a race like the Wasatch 100, it”s definitely about the runner,” Hill said. “With a race like this, you get that, too, but also a sense of teamwork. It”s like a big party.”
Hill”s father, Steve, a graduate of BYU law school, is the visionary behind the race. He modeled it after the famous Hood to Coast Relay, a 195-mile race from Mt. Hood to the Oregon coast that draws a thousand teams each August. Steve, his son, and Bell started their own company – Back Road Events – to put on a similar race in Utah this year.
“It”s something we”ve wanted to do for a long time,” Bell said. “We”ve been home from our missions a couple of years. Finally this year, we said, ”We”ve got to get on it. This year is the year.””
Though Hill and Bell both work and attend school in the day, they spend their nights working full time on the race. They said they will need many volunteers for the race to be successful.
The race”s directors said the running community has shown an overwhelming positive response. Rumor has it even BYU”s elite distance runners are planning to participate.
“Teams are filling up fast,” Bell said. “We had a ton of people on the website this weekend.”
In order to work out any glitches, the race directors are limiting the event to 30 teams the first year. They said they hope someday to rival the Hood to Coast Relay, which had only eight teams its first year.
Teams may register at www.wasatchbackrelay.com, as well as individual runners looking to help fill a team. The cost is $540 per team, or about $45 a head, approximately half the cost of similar relay races, according to Hill. Saturday is the last day to register.
“It”s not like any other race in Utah,” Bell said. “It”s the longest race and, to my knowledge, the only team race of this magnitude – 12 people on a team running 170 miles from Logan to Park City. That seems hard, but people realize that together they can conquer so much.”
