WBR-Day 2. After my half hour of sleep we were off again. I
felt better after getting some rest. I only did another mile warm-up before my
second leg. This leg was my longest and slightly up hill. The temp had also
dropped a considerable amount (to ~45F). I got out and wore gloves and a
headband. Dave came in at 2:50AM and I nearly missed him, the volunteers never
called out our number. Then I was off and moving and warming up quickly. This
leg the goal pace was only 6:10 so I felt comfortable even with the slight
uphill grade. I probably should have pushed the first half a little more but
just wanted to stay in a groove. The first mile was 6:04 and I felt good about the effort. The next mile was 6:02 and I was really happy. The
next mile was more of the same 6:06
(this portion of the course climbed from ~5400ft to ~5500ft). I started to get
a little too hot at this point and took off my headband, the problem was that
my headlamp also came off I nearly dropped it but caught it just in time. I got
the headlamp back on and it was loose I decided not to mess with it and just
let the bouncing off my glasses be my “running metronome”… This portion had a
couple tight turns to go under an expressway I hit it in 6:17. I’m sure it was slower with the turns, the slight
headwind, and messing with the headlamp. For this leg we were starting to get
into the thick of the other people and passing the other teams really helps when
you are running in the pitch dark, especially when they would go with me for a
few steps. Miles 4 and 5 both had short steep climbs and I hit them in 6:25 and 6:11. The final stretch into the exchange was at 5:44 pace. Total
6.13 miles in 37:52.90 Avg. 6:10 HR 177
my total ascent on this leg was 863 ft with 652 ft of descent. In the end I
didn’t lose or gain any time for the team with this leg but got 29 “roadkill” (Sasha you are scary with
your predictions!!!). I did a half mile cool down at the next exchange.
At the next major exchange I did a little walking around but
nowhere near as much as I did at Del Sol and tried to get a little more sleep.
I managed about an hour. At this point we were told we were about 40 minutes
behind BYU and about 40 minutes up on the Blue team so the main pressure was
just trying to hit our marks. My final leg was by far my hardest. It was only
3.7 miles but it was on one of the two hardest hills on the relay named “You’ve
got to be kidding” (my leg) and “Ragnar” (the name sake of all the relays
hosted by this group and Seth’s leg on which he holds the record). My leg has a
nice flat half mile and then climbs nearly 1500 ft in just over three miles. It
was warming up and I did a short half mile warm-up and was as ready as I was
ever going to be. I was pretty rested considering I’d actually gotten sleep
this relay and really wanted to do my best. Dave came in at 8:48AM and I was
off. As I said the first half mile was flat and I took advantage of it. Then I
hit the hill, literally I ran right into it and fell down. Not really but my
quads immediately locked up with the climbing. I just tried to power through it
and focused on quick turnover. Mi 1 6:54.
The next mile was all up and the road changed to a dirt/gravel mixture of which
I got to breath in a lot of it. There were a few people to work off of and the
van was super-supportive as I struggled to “run” up this thing. Mi 2 8:58. My projected time for this
leg was supposed to be 8:35 pace and I was seeing that slip away but I was
trying not to look at my watch and just push as hard as I could. The next mile
was in 10:38 and in all
honesty that was about as hard as I could push. This mile had some evil spots
where it would start to level off but about the time I could get some leg
turnover it would start to climb again, really messed with my muscles… The
final stretch into the exchange I ran at 8:48 pace. Total 3.57 miles in 31:30.83 Avg. 8:50 HR 176 with 1574 ft of
ascent and only 177 ft of descent only got 4
“roadkill”. I “lost” the team nearly 54 seconds on this leg. Back into the
van and cheering on the truly superhuman performance of Seth on his climb up
Ragnar. Did one mile cooldown between the next two exchanges.
Mi 13-flats
After some more great performances by the remaining guys in
the van we crossed the finish line in 17 hrs and 54 min finishing in second
place and finishing 35 min behind BYU out of 545 finishing teams. Not too
shabby for a bunch of mostly married guys with kids and jobs versus a bunch of
NCAA DI college athletes. We also finished almost 1 hr exactly in front of the FRB
Blue team. Great races by all. Thank you to everyone on both teams and to all
the other bloggers that I met on other teams and in route as volunteers. I also have to thank Paul for the entry and Sasha and Steve H for the sponsorship. Also,
a special thank you to Harold Nez for agreeing to volunteer and help set up the
finish area even though we wasn’t able to see any of the race. I hope to be a
part of another fine relay with the FRB. The relays are tough and though I
would have to say winning Del Sol and the drives down and back were more fun than
this experience I still had a great time this weekend and am glad I did it and
am happy that I was a part of another great team. I'm sure I'm going to remember about 1000 things I did and just forgot
amongst the sleep deprivation so if I didn’t add the detail or forgot to
mention someone sorry.
Asics DS-Trainer #1: 280 / / Asics DS-Trainer #2: 281 / /
Saucony Rides #1: 287 / / Saucony Rides #2: 290 // Adidas Adistar (flats): 175
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