my makeup may be flaking

After a short sleep in the van (it was too cold outside) I awoke just before 2am.  I had plenty of time to warmup and was feeling pretty good when the time came for my next leg to start.  My 2nd leg was the easiest of the three, an almost flat 4.5 miles which I cruised at a little under 6 minute pace to beat my projected split by about 20seconds.

Then I repeated the cycle, getting about 2 hours of sleep while Van 1 did its thing. It was on the final van that things got interesting. I awoke at about 8am giving me very little time before we had to start. Bill was our first runner and Cody had told him the wrong distance at the start of the leg (too short), something that would have made me very worried. Bill did fine though and when Steve's foot cramped up on the next leg, Bill leapt out and finished it off for him!

Then came the two ridiculous legs ran by Kory and Steve C., they gained about 3500' between them. I noticed that every time we stopped, it was getting harder and harder for me to breathe. The van dropped me off at the top of Ragnar and I cramped up jogging over to the bathrooms (uh oh).  I knew that I was supposed to average 5:15 pace for this leg, but I could see that the first mile was up and I was going to run it in barely sub 7. When I got the hand off, I went off at a fairly conservative pace. I knew that it would be a long leg and I didn't want to destroy myself.  When I came over the top of the first rise I then had about 1000' feet to lose in the next mile (that's right). I flew through that mile, picking up speed the whole way, but I paid dearly for it when the road flattened out and I almost had to drop out when the road started climbing again. At 3.9 miles I was at 25:00, which was over a minute per mile behind my projected pace.  Fortunately, it was a friendly 5% grade down the rest of the way and I covered that in 16:21 (5:21 pace). When I crossed the finish line, my knees very nearly buckled and I could barely walk.  I would be sore from that run for a week. I was sore from Boston for only 3 days.