10.3 race miles 1.7 warm up and cool down miles (not so good today) My 2nd leg (Leg #16, 6.1 miles long, 34:07, 5:36 avg min mile pace)
In the land of relay’s you may be running a 6.1 mile race at 2:36 in the morning. That’s exactly what I did today. This was the most eventful leg I’ve ever run in my relay history. I took off and had about .2 miles of paved road and then it turned into gravel, with pot holes and keep in mind it’s dark. So the course was rolling (some up some down) and I’m stumbling up through grapefruit orchards and all this time I’m brewing up a witch’s brew in my stomach with that Subway from earlier, a chocolate GU, and way too much Gatorade. As I’m laboring to get things going I feel like I’ve been running for about 3 miles but don’t want to take time to look at my Garmin to see how far it’s actually been- so I wait until it beeps at the next mile and then the light comes on and I look to see where I’m at. It just about floors me that it only says 1 mile. I thought to myself there’s no way. But I just keep moving along and at mile 2 I start to get a good side ache. No problem I’ve had them before just keep running. Well 5 miles into the run I start to do little dry heaves. But I don’t think too much about it as now I’m starting some good downhill and almost done. Then it turned into about every 6 strides I’d heave and I had just passed three people and I knew they could hear me. However I was coming up on a girl and then I felt it coming and knew (this was the real deal) and vomit was coming out. As I got closer to her she could hear me loudly screaming, and making the puking sound. Then she turned around all scared and screamed “What way are you going to go ?”, meaning are you going to pass me on the right or left so I can get out of the way of the splash. I tried to answer her but when I spoke I started puking and said “I don’t know”. It sucked. Then I just pressed on and finished and never apologized to her. But I’m pretty sure I didn’t get any on her.
Then we went to the next major exchange and I got about 20 more min’s of sleep, and tried to settle my stomach before my last leg. I was hungry but didn’t dare eat anything until the relay was over. 
3rd leg # 28, 24:42, 6:04 min mile pace. This leg was virtually all up a really nasty hill. When I took off I thought I’d like to run it at least under 6 min mile pace. But the lack of food, rest, a head wind and the hill it’s self just killed me. I tried to gut it out and pushed about as hard as my tired legs would go and in the end was actually pretty amazed I had ran it that fast. I still had some side ache pains hanging over from the 2nd leg nightmare so my breath was a little short. But overall I was happy with the performance of this leg. I also saw a coyote staring at me but then he ran off. Must not have wanted to get any puke on his pretty fur coat. The best part of this leg was that I passed a runner and when I did it put us out in front of the rest of the 190 teams. Now there was no one left to pass and we could just finish strong as a team and win.
This was a great trip. We had a blast during the race and even more fun hanging out the rest of the trip. When the race was over all 12 of us and our drivers (James & Steve) went to James and Lybi’s house for a great pasta dinner. It was fun to hang with the other guys and hear their stories.
Then our travel van decided to drive back home. We had planned on staying down there but all wanted to get home to our cute little wives. So we bravely left and about 50 miles up the freeway we all hit rock bottom. We had pretty much been up for 36 hours and together ran 190 miles. We ended up pushing on to Flagstaff and getting a room for the 7 of us and enjoying one of the best Ihop meals you could ever dream about. The guys got a little out of hand there and I had to be the adult and settle everyone down before we got into trouble. Then we talked about the influences of soccer on our American society.
ZZ Top
Baseball
Elmers Glu
Vicks
You know what I’m talking about. Just makin’ memories baby.
| 