8 Tuff Miles

"Just keep swimming, just keep swimming....." are the immortal words of little Nemo and come in handy when you decide to make your first footrace an 8.3 mile traunce across virtually 90 degree hills all over St. John in an old pair of broken-in puma tennis shoes.

The 8 Tuff Miles race is an annual footrace that goes from Cruz Bay to Coral Bay along Centerline Road. In it's 12th year, it was quite the event with over 600 people from many different states and countries flying in to participate. The island population swelled to create a pre and post-race festive environment with lots of gatorade pre-race, and lots of beer post-race!

Katie, Jess and decided to start out together and ended up finishing all within 15 minutes of each other. For a first-time racer, I was proud of my pace of 11:02 and spot within the Top 100 women.

Katie and I are really not that sweaty...it started to pour in the middle of the race which is what I think saved all of us, though it made for some very squishy shoes. If i happen to be able to afford it, I'd really love to make an annual pilgrimage to run 8 Tuff...it was just such a great, exciting, lively vibe. I think I finally found my runner's high!

This is my favorite beach on St. John (Oppenheimer/Gibney Beach. Yes, Oppenheimer as in the creator of the A-bomb.) where I went to cool my heels after the race. Not a bad place to unwind, right? I had accomplished too much by 9am on a Saturday on a tropical island and needed to be lazy under palm trees. The problem was that once I tried to get up off the sand, i couldn't move!!

Peace, love and gatorade....Jilly

PS! Please read the Friends of VI blog link on the left...i didn't know that the link was faulty, but it's fixed now and talks about the work that I am doing here. It's not just alllll fun and games :)