Disclaimer: I received a free entry to North Olympic Discovery Relay as part of being a BibRave Pro. Learn more about becoming a BibRave Pro (ambassador), and check out BibRave.com to review find and write race reviews.

I got to return to the North Olympic Discovery Marathon this year and instead of the half I ran with my boyfriend as a two-person relay team!

The North Olympic Discovery Marathon Relay consists of five legs split up into varying distances between 4.2 and 6.7 miles. The marathon starts at 7 Cedars Casino and ends in downtown Port Angeles.

Expo
The expo is held at the Red Lion Hotel right by the finish line for the race. It’s small but very well organized. The downstairs ballroom is packet pickup and the upstairs has the vendors. Relay packet pickup took a bit but we were able to get all of our questions answered. In our race packet was a reusable shopping bag, our keepsake bibs, our actual time-chipped race bib attached to a race belt, the reusable gear check bags, and our long sleeve tech shirts. The tech shirt has “Marathon Relay” on it which is awesome and a sweet zip pocket!

After getting our packet we headed upstairs and look around the expo. There were some cool races in Bellingham that I am considering running in the future. We then headed to Hurricane Ridge for some sightseeing and hiking. If you have never been I highly recommend a visit. The view of the Olympics is gorgeous and it’s well worth the drive. We headed back into town and found some pasta for dinner and then headed to bed.

Race Day
We headed to the start around 6am and got the start line with plenty of time to use the bathroom and warm up. The weather at the beginning was near perfect. About 50 degrees and a bit overcast. Dan ran the first leg and he started with the marathoners. The started and I quickly hopped back into my car and headed to the first exchange.

The exchange directions were great. We had no issues navigating to each exchange. Since it was two of us we had to cool down and then drive to the next exchange by ourselves. Dan is a much faster runner than me so it was a bit easier to judge when he would be arriving at the exchanges.

The first 3 legs went quite well, I ran pretty slow since getting sick I was not in shape to run 9-10 minute miles. Around halfway through the third leg Dan wasn’t feeling great and the weather was starting to get wet and cold. After starting the hillier fourth leg I started to not feel good either.

As I finished leg 4 the rain really started to come down and I was happy I was done running. Dan wasn’t so lucky and had to finish the race is the pouring rain. I hopped in the car, changed into dry clothes and drove to the finish line. I found Dan on the trail on the last quarter of a mile and we ran together to the finish line. Even though we were some of the last people to finish the volunteers and food were still there!

Overall, I was so happy we ran the marathon relay. In the future, I would run it with 3 or more people so that waiting at the exchanges wasn’t so lonely. I would gladly go back and run the NODM Half Marathon because the course support.

Race overview:
Dan – Legs: 1, 3 & 5 –17.1 miles
Favorite leg: 1, 5 if it wasn’t raining
Favorite part of the experience: Volunteers

Amanda – Legs: 2 & 4 – 9.1 miles
Favorite leg: 4
Favorite part of the experience: Race swag and volunteers