You may not realize this, but Illinois has hills. Pretty big ones, too. In fact, Southern Illinois – especially around the Shawnee National Forest – has some really rugged terrain and is absolutely gorgeous.

This is one of the reasons that it always amuses me when I hear people, including some of my favorite friends, talk about how Illinois ends when you get south of I-80… For one thing, since I grew up in Southern Illinois, I guess that logic would mean that I’m from another state…For another, there are lots of great things about Illinois outside of this wonderful city that I love – wineries, beautiful scenery and giant hills with amazing views just to name a few.

This past weekend, people from all over Illinois and 11 different states made the trek to check out So IL – especially the hills - because Saturday was the annual River to River Relay. More than 240 teams of eight run the distance between the Mississippi River and the Ohio River, which is a total of 80 miles. In case you haven’t already done the math, that means that each person covers about 10 miles, but that distance is broken up into three legs of three-ish miles each throughout the course of the day - providing a glorious combination of running, sitting, cheering, running, sitting, cheering and - for some of us – eventually celebrating being done with the running with some drinking.

But it’s definitely not just about running (or sitting, or cheering or even drinking)…everyone I’ve heard talk about it says they do it because it’s just a really fun day in a beautiful area, and I couldn’t agree more. This is how it works…

Each team rents a giant 15-passenger van that everyone rides in from exchange point to exchange point, which can be about 15 hours start to finish. As I’m sure you can imagine, it smells awesome by the end of the day…Most teams – at least the fun ones- transform their giant plain white vans into obscenely colorful and tacky ones. For my team - the “Munning Ruppets,” that looks a little something like this:

 As you can probably tell, we went with a patriotic theme this year. Specifically, the theme was “Ruppets Take the White House,” complete with all possible patriotic paraphernalia – both for the van and otherwise. A bit to our surprise, we did not win the award for Best Decorated Vehicle – another Chicago-area team – “No Country for Slow Men” went home with that honor; however, we did win Best Team Uniform. There is just something about making t-shirts and wearing obnoxious socks that makes everything more fun…

Throughout the course, there are organized exchange points where you cheer the runners as on as one team member finishes their leg and passes the baton onto the next runner. Then you high five, sweat profusely and everyone loads back into the van. Since most of the course follows roads, the van passes the runner on the way to the next exchange point, honking and cheering them on until the van disappears from sight and the runner is left with three miles to run by themselves (this neverending act of honking and cheering is exactly how our BFF team “The Honkin’ WooHoos” got their name - so clever those WooHoo’s).  Rinse and repeat 24 times without it ever getting old - really… Then at the last leg, the whole team meets the final runner and crosses the finish line together.

Even though I can still feel the hills with every step I take, I’m already looking forward to next year! Registration for River to River sells out in less than five minutes every year, so if you’ve got to act fast if you want to get in.

But even if you have no interest in driving for hours to run up hills, I would highly recommend a trip “down south” for a nice change of scenery anytime!