2nd leg of the relay was from Newcastle to just before Enterprise. It was 8.3 miles long with some pretty good rollers, but it was fairly runnable. The only downfall was it was in the middle of the night and there was at least 5 but maybe 8 cattlegards in the road that were unmarked. This was very bad... I was hitting full stride and would basically have to slide to a stop before having to walk across each one. They at least should have laid some wood or mats down so you could run over them... and maybe marked it with a light or glow stick. Anyways I felt pretty good for this run. Even though before I left our van was attacked by a 50 year old handicap man who said we ran over his dog and he wanted money for it... Wow that was a trip! Hit a 5:54 avg for this leg and had 22 road kills. 3rd leg was 7.5 miles long from around Rockville up to the finish line by Zion NP in the town of Springdale. This leg was all uphill with the last 3 miles up through Springdale being really hard. Before this leg even started I was in a bad way. I had some stomach issues and had taken a record 30 trips to the porta potty during a relay. I was dizzy just walking around and while trying to run during the warm up I knew I was going to die. First of all I never run great in relays. Second the stomach issues were really, really bad. Third I had taken some No Doz and other alert aids before running the third leg to try and rally my system.... and I'd never taken them before to see how things would go. So I was jacked up and if bailing out would have been an option I would have taken it. I started out just pushing along up a pretty good hill and then tried to relax one up the hill as it kind of leveled off for a half mile or so. Then once we hit the hills just before Springdale and all the way through that town I really started to struggle. BAD. Going into this leg our team had a 2 min lead over Mike Vicks team. He was also running this leg. So I knew I was jacked and I knew Mike was going to hunt me down but I wanted so bad to try to hold it together.... didn't happen. He caught me as we entered Springdale and didn't even try to go with him. Then on the miles up through town to the finish he just kept gaping me and ended up beating me by 2 mins. So I ended up running the leg in 46 mins (a 6:09 avg) and he ran it in 42 min's. I felt pretty pathetic about the whole deal. I think I could have ran the leg at least 2 min's faster had I not been so jacked... but Vick still ran an amazing 3rd leg. I was however surprised that I was even able to run a 6:09 avg being so sick and the leg it's self is pretty tough with lots of hills. And it was over 80 F by the time we started running so I was hot. Anyways the relay was fun but very taxing. In a 40 hour time frame I got less than ONE hour of sleep. Even on relays I've done in the past I've gotten more rest than this one. But for some reason sleep just didn't happen. I always kind of stink in relays too. It was fun to run it with this team and we did somehow finish 3rd overall. In the end it was just what I wanted going into it. My goals was to run this relay to get a good workout in. And that's just what I got. Three legs at around Tinman effort but no lagging soreness to bother me the rest of the week.
| 