My first relay and what an incredible experience. This will be a long, long read so forgive my verbosity!
First, many thanks to my teammates for all their efforts in running the relay. I know no one left a single drop in the tank and everyone ran their guts out and for that, I'm truly thankful and inspired. Second, many, many thanks to Paul Peterson for sponsoring our entry into the race. I didn't know what kind of a $$$ sacrifice Paul made for us to run for him until I got the scoop in the relay and I was humbled by his ENORMOUS contribution! Paul, I hope we did you proud!!! Last, thanks to my van-mates for saving my butt from myself and my own driving!
After a restless night of anxious sleep, early Friday I left the house and proceeded north picking up a couple of teammates at the airport (Cody and Matt), one in Seattle (Aaron), and our final "van"-mate in Bellevue (Tim). We headed north to Blaine, WA just south of Canada for our 2pm start time where we lined up against a dozen other teams. Since our team was short-handed (9 of 12), some of us were running an extra leg or two. I was picked to run legs 1, 13, 14, and 25, so my extra leg was going to be a back-to-back effort. My legs also got progressively harder as the race went on....leg 1 was 6.2 miles, 13 and 14 combined were 7.2 miles, and 25 was a 7.8 mile beast with some "rolling" hills to combat and a final uphill one mile climb to my personal finish. So knowing I was the leadoff runner was a bit intimidating. Early on, I'd asked Paul how best to estimate an average pace and he emailed me that using a half-marathon pace was usually a good estimate. So I promptly used my best race ever to-date, my 15K last March, plugged it into the McMillan race calculator and came up with a 6:29/mi half-marathon projection, rounded it up to 6:30/mi and submitted that. Of course, that 15K race turned out to be a peak and I had some tough races after that where I never quite got back to that level. Then, a short break after my marathon during some vacation time set me back quite a bit and needless to say, I was quite nervous all the way into the relay about being able to hold up to my leg projections. Part of me wanted to let myself off the hook and to revise my estimates, especially with picking up an extra leg, but I really didn't feel like I had the right and didn't want to let my teammates down before we even started. As I lined up at the start, all these thoughts ran through my head for the millionth time. My first leg was essentially a 10K and Paul's magical race spreadsheet formulas took my 6:30/mi projection, crunched the difficulty of the leg with the expected temps and spit out a goal time and pace of 41:46, 6:41/mi.
Promptly at 2pm the horn sounded and we were off. Heading down the gravel path for the road I watched about 8 of the other runners take off and quickly found myself in 9th place! Wha??? About a quarter mile in I checked my garmin and saw I was running slightly below a 6:00/mi pace and it was already starting to feel like it. The sun had come out and the 70F temps were already starting to feel warm as I watched the crowd rabbit away, but I knew I had to run my race so I settled back into what felt like the hardest pace I could carry for 6.2 miles and told myself to relax and that I'd be able to reel them back in. Fortunately for me, I was able to reel all but 2 of the runners in by the end of my leg and I finished in 40:32, a 6:37/mi pace and well under my projection for this leg, picking up an extra 1:14 for the team, handing off to Cody "The Machine" who promptly dusted the competition I'd been unable to catch. Having raced before but never back-to-back-to-back legs, I was very concerned on how I'd run the next two legs given what would be a short recovery period (not the typical 2 week minimum time between races but rather 7 hours, many of which would be spent riding in a truck. Fortunately, the excitement of watching my teammates smoke the competition helped keep my mind off things and made things really fun! Cody ran a blisteringly fast leg (one of his extra legs already) and handed off to Tim, who started out on a long 8.2 mile stretch in the heat of the day. Which is when I nearly completely derailed our entire race with one turn of the steering wheel.
Looking for a pull-off point about 2 miles into Tim's leg where we could hand him some water and cheer was difficult....a narrow country road with no shoulders. Fortunately, a small pulloff appeared where I saw a yellow gate that normally indicates a dirt track to enter forest or other unimproved land. Figuring I would swing in their but wanting to get off the road entirely, I completely missed the fact that the pulloff was only wide enough to drive into perpendicular to the road and wouldn't accomodate my parallel parking maneuver. Tall grass masked the 4' ditch on either side of the turnout. So despite having a big 3/4 ton 4WD pickup truck, I managed to stick the front right tire into the ditch getting us completely stuck. I completely panicked. When 4WD didn't bail me out and neither did having the guys stand on the rear bumper to increase the weight in the back in the hopes that I could drive out, my only coherent thoughts aside from how I'd just completely screwed our entire team was to get on the phone and get a tow truck rolling ASAP. A call to AAA finally yielded an operator who promised to dispatch a tow immediately but indicates a 1 hr wait was usually the minimum. Fortunately, my team was much more organized and level-headed. Cody managed to flag down another team and convinced them to shuttle our next two runners ahead to the exchange. The fact that it was the high-school team that'd taken second place last year and knew we were one of their most dangerous competitors was all the more impressive.....a big shout-out to the N.U.D.E. runners from Tahoma school district in Maple Valley, WA and their coaches for their incredibly sportsmanlike gesture. Next, Cody managed to flag down a couple of security guards from a nearby plant, one who was a self-described "country redneck" who quickly retrieved his personal pickup truck and chains to drag us back onto all four wheels. We took an extra 2 minutes so I could thank him profusely, give him $40 for his kindheartedness to save my bacon, and to get some required video/picture footage of the scene of the accident. Tim managed to push thru his long grueling leg in the heat of the day sun without the promised water stops while we were able to get through to the next exchange and retrieve our runners without missing a leg. Aside from never being able to forget "the ditch incident" because of the horror I felt at putting us in that situation, I'll also never forget the quick thinking my team displayed and the fact that instead of giving me a hard time, they all kept telling me it was no big deal, probably on seeing I was completely out of my mind horrified with what I'd done. I couldn't have asked for a better crew to run with and I'm truly humbled by the experience already. Aaron, Tim and Cody (again) ran the next three legs, each exceeding their pace projections, giving us a substantial time cushion over our projections as well as a lead on our 2pm competition. We'd even begun to catch some of the 1pm teams in the process and the "coolness" of passing "roadkill" definitely kept us psyched up and feeling good. We linked up with our Van 2 teammates Andy, Mark and Craig (Dave to join during their legs as he rushed from Friday work to make it in time for his leg) at the first major exchange. These guys were definitely studs....they were prepping to run 2 runners short and all faced 5 legs to the normal 3 with calm confidence. Short break while Van 2 ran their first set of legs cut even shorter when the Van 2 runners gained around 15 minutes on their first set of projections. Uh, wow!!! My next run started around 9:20pm and was going to be a double....legs 13 and 14, both thankfully short at 3.6 apiece. Still, a 7.2 mi run mere hours after a 10K race had me worried how I'd respond, especially given a lack of any time to sleep. First half was had some minor uphill but the second made up for it with a downhill. Oh, and it got dark while I was running, so it'd be my first race experience in the dark. Got the handoff from Dave and I was off. First problem.....Garmin 405 had gone into standby and I spent some time and energy fumbling trying to get *something* to start. Finally had success a couple of tenths into my leg. Managed to catch and pass 2 other runners by the halfway mark but my legs were very tired.....I shortened my stride and tried to increase my turnover because I was really afraid they would give out on me or I'd pull something but I didn't back off any. Some dark backroads, passing 4 other runners, nearly choking on some gatorade, and a double-tractor trailer UPS truck that decided not to slow at all nor to budge an inch out of the lane I was in were the only significant things I remember. The downhill stretch was desperately needed and helped me gain a bit of ground and overall I was a bit under my combined projection of 47:42 (fast on the first one, slow on the second). I've forgotten my exact time but will fill it in later when I get a copy of the splits spreadsheet. ***Actual time was 23:09 and 24:00, so 47:09 total....under by 33 seconds!***
The rest of our van ran excellent legs and we handed off to Van 2 again having gained a bit more ground on our projections, although not as much as the first time. We hit the Deception Pass State Park and everyone promptly passed out for a quick 2 hour nap. Continued on tomorrow's page... Adrenaline 8s (Blue) - 133.25 miles. | 