Lake-to-lake relay. 3 legs instead of the usual 2. It's hard to sprint 2 legs then finish with a 7 miler. I was on tap to do Leg 5, Leg 7, and Leg 10 but ended up also doing 1.27 of Leg 3 due to a restroom emergency. Leg 3 was a 7:30 mile Leg 5: the plan here was to start slowly so that I would have something left for the other two sections of this run. My brother Robert and his team went out just in front of me though so my ego and pride got the better of me and I turned it on right out of the gate. He had a good head start on me and I wanted to catch him. I almost pulled it off. He crossed the finish line for this section just moments before me. I could even see him with about 600 yards to go and thought I was going to get there, but I think he saw me too and picked up the pace. I ended up finishing this leg in just under 30 minutes; a 7:20 pace. Leg 7: This was much harder than I expected it to be. Mostly, I think, because I had spent so much energy trying to catch Robert on the last leg. I passed 9 teams on this leg so I wasn't the only one struggling. I pulled this one out in 39:51; 8:14 per mile. Slower than I would have liked but I was also really trying to pull it back because I knew I still had Leg 10 to run. I think, had this been my last leg, even being as tired as I was, I could have made it under 8:00 miles. Leg 10: the longest leg in the whole course. I was dead tired before this started. I thought some food and caffeine would help get my energy level back up so I ate 2 peanut butter sandwiches and ingested 250 mg of caffeine before I started. It didn't help that much. I've heard a lot of ultra runners mock these relays because the mileage is so short, comparatively, but there is something to be said for the difficulty level of stopping, resting, and then starting again. I've run 17 miles straight on many occasions and never felt as spent in the last 7 miles as I did here. I tried to keep the speed up, and I managed to pass 2 people, but this was my slowest lap. I was passed 3 times, something that hadn't happened on either of the previous two laps. In the end, I pulled this one out in 1:03:54; 9:05 average. If we do it again next year I think I will spend more of my winter doing endurance-speed work to get ready for this sucker. All in all this race was awesome. It's a good opportunity to get to bond with people while running. Plus, it's a good excuse for a vacation right at that time of the year when the cold and snow have taken all the pleasure out of the outdoors and you just need some sunshine, 70 degree temps and a mixture of asphalt and trails. | 