Weber St. upends Y. in Wasatch Back

PARK CITY — And so the pendulum swings. The balance of power in the Ragnar Relay Wasatch Back keeps shifting back and forth between team Weber State and team BYU, with Weber taking home the bragging rights this year with a time of 17:40:40. BYU finished at 17:51:51.

"It's a good feeling," said Corbin Talley, Weber State's team captain. "We kind of have a rivalry."

Curves with a Kick won the women's division, posting a time of 23:42:42, and Runners Corner had the fastest time in the mixed division, posting a 19:25:25.

This is the fourth year the Wasatch Back has been run. Weber won the inaugural race, and BYU has taken the last two, winning last year by a slim three-minute margin.

With Weber winning this year, the series is notched at two. Both teams consist of current track team members as well as alumni. After four years, do they even want to continue running this dynamic and exhausting race?

"Right now we're kind of like, 'Uh I don't know,"' said Talley about the grueling race. "But a month from now I'm sure we'll plan on doing it next year. We'll come back."

What made Weber's win even more impressive was the fact that it had only 11 team members, as opposed to the normal 12. That means three runners had to run four legs instead of three. Weber's victory margin was 11 minutes and 51 seconds, meaning it beat BYU by an average of about three seconds per mile.

More than 3,600 participants signed up this year to run the Wasatch Back. That's a gargantuan leap from the 260 runners who raced the first year. The relay stretches six-and-a-half marathons and traverses the backside of the Wasatch Mountains from Logan to Park City.

What makes the race so interesting are the costumes that teams compete in — and the team vans that are decorated in all sorts of amusing designs.

Among others, some interesting costumes included: a women's team dressed as Xena warrior princesses; a women's team with pig noses; a men's team in pink shirts named Victorias Secret; and a mixed team with an outdoor theme, one person carried a snowboard on his back, while another person dragged a kayak on wheels while running.

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