What a great day for a race and what a great race. We ahd Bill, me, Dustin, James, and Hayden, and ran in that order, 5 miles each leg, two legs each. Bill ran the first leg and was in 3rd when he handed it off to me. We were just a few minutes behind and I started off at about 5:50 pace. I ran Dam to Dam 5 miler in Hurricane a few weeks ago at about 6:07 pace and so when I looked at the Garmin and saw sub 6 I decided to just see how it went. My splits were:
5:48, pretty level, slight uphill at the start
6:11, good uphill climb, saw 2nd place guy cresting the top as I came around the bend
5:39, slight downhill, wind at my back, felt great
5:39, same as mile 3
5:55, pretty good steady hill but I had passed #2 guy and had #1 guy in my sights at this point
.4 at 5:11 pace trying to catch #1 but he got there just ahead of me, maybe 10-15 seconds
Overall about 5:48 pace I think, which is awesome considering Dam to Dam at 6:07!
Now what about 2nd leg?
Dustin held our place against a strong 3rd leg runner for the High school team (+ Ross Decker, fast, but his son was on the team and is a Sr. in H.S.) While we waited for Dustin I ran a cool down with James who was warming up for the handoff with Dustin. As we finished our cooldown we saw the 1st place team coming in and then Dustin coming too. James didn't even have his bib number on so we lost 20-30 seconds waiting while Dustin gave the shirt off his back to James. Pretty tense for a minute but it turned out okay. James gained a bit on Ross and handed off to Hayden about 1 minute back. He smoked his leg at 5:13 pace and came in 1:30 ahead of 2nd place and handed off to Bill again. Bill's leg was all uphill along the river and the high school team's runner passed him right at the end of his leg. Their next runner sprinted out and Bill handed off to me just behind. I caught their runner less than a mile into it and never looked back. Splits:
5:52 feeling okay but could tell early that I did not have the energy to hold it
6:00 trying my best to keep it under 6, but I knew the 2nd place guy was struggling
6:12 really hard to focus, I knew 6:30 pace would keep me at least a minute ahead of 2nd place by the end but didn't want to settle for slower pace
6:08 ran past my house and my wife and kids were outside to cheer me on. dropped to 5:30 for .25 then the last hill from riverside to 3050 (costco rd) took it out of me
.4 at 6:30 figured there was no point, I knew I was done...
Overall 6:05 pace, pretty good considering I had run 5 miles at 5:48 and, once again, beat my Dam to Dam pace!
We had a couple minutes on them by the time I handed off to Dustin again. Dustin did well on his leg and increased the lead even more even with a huge hill at the end on Washington Dam road. He handed off to James who had a straight climb that may have been close to .75 miles. Ross gained on James a bit and we had about a 3 minute lead when he gave it to Hayden. Once again, Hayden smoked it in, this time avg about 5:24 and we won by about 6 mins.
The day was awesome, had some great people to spend the 5 hours with, and we took first place, what more could we ask for? Maybe the course record? well we got that too! (first year race...) | 