Hopefully the weather conditions will work out better for the second annual Iowa Market-to-Market Relay tomorrow.

Co-creator Ben Cohoon says he and co-creator Jason Bakewell spent 18-months planning for the first-ever event in Iowa.  Then on the day of the race, they had to fight through a couple of weather obstacles.

He states that they had contingency plans in place that they had to use because a couple of different areas on the 75-mile course on the Raccoon River Valley Trail were prone to flooding which had happened that day.

Cohoon talks about another weather-related challenge that they had to make last-minute changes to.

“It was very windy that day so some of the plans that we had at the finish line (in Des Moines) couldn’t be done because of the 40-mile-per-hour gust of wind that we were constantly having but, the good thing was that the wind was pushing runners all day long, so it made for a fun running time when you had wind behind you.”

He points out that the Nebraska Market-to-Market Relay that was started in 2007 is a little different than the one in Iowa.  Cohoon explains that the Nebraska race includes 21 exchange zones and 60% of the relay is on different trails with 500 teams participating.  The Iowa Market-to-Market Relay has 300 teams with 17 exchange zones and is 100% on trails.

Later this year, Cohoon adds that they will be launching a new relay race in Ohio.

The race from Jefferson to Des Moines will start at 5:40am on Saturday, May 10th on the south side of the downtown square in Jefferson.