After James finished his first leg, we drove to East Canyon lake, where I was able to lay down and got somewhere between 1 to 1.5 hours of sleep. Then van 1 arrived and it was our turn again. BYU was 5-10 minutes ahead. My van had some very hard, long legs but did awesome though many of them felt horrible (throwing up, etc). I rode in the van until my next leg, leg 23. It was pretty easy- 4.6 miles with rolling hills and a net gain of 112 feet. Clyde handed off to me around 4:30 in the morning. I started off fast and felt great, even on the uphills. I passed 11 people but really didn't have anything to gauge my pace until I crossed the freeway at 3.2 miles (under 20 minutes, just slow of my 6:09/mile projected pace). I finished strong with a time of 27:32, 44 seconds faster than projected. I felt very energized and enjoyed this leg- nice cool weather, not uphill, and actually had runners to pass. My second leg last year (Trappers loop) was also my best, which is interesting. My overall fatigue/lack of sleep hit me right when I finished, though, but I forced myself to eat and drink a bunch while we waited for James and drove to Midway.
At Midway, I got 30-60 minutes sleep on the grass before it was time to run again. My van did great (Dan passed 50+ teams on his leg), with Drew and Clyde showing their intestinal fortitude with fast times up Ragnar (combined 7.6 miles, 3100 feet up in 68 minutes- under 9 minute miles while running straight up a mountain). My last leg ran the final 0.9 miles to the top of the mountain, then was a quad-burning, lung-busting, body-cramping 2.8 miles more with 1200 feet down, with probably 900 feet of descent in 1.8 miles (almost 10% grade). I reached the top in 6:00 min (6:30 pace uphill, so I was happy), then started the screaming downhill. It was awesome, but painful. My body did not cramp up, though I have some very nice raw spots on my heels. I was running as fast as I could, barely having time to see where I was stepping and almost tripping a few times. I did the first 1.5 miles downhill in 7 minutes (4:40/mile pace). I hit a small incline and slowed down a touch, but tried to regain my speed on the downhill again. Then, with about 1/2 mile left, there was a rather large and very, very unexpected uphill (it probably wasn't more than 200 meters long, but seemed huge). It slowed me to what felt like a crawl. I finally crested it and resumed a more gradual downhill, running at maybe 5:30-6:00 min pace to the exchange. Total time 20:56, 5:39 average (this seems a bit slow given how fast I was running, either meaning the uphill took longer than I thought or the leg was a bit long). I was exhausted and had run out of gas, not surprising given how hard I was running on the first 3 miles plus the total relay with little sleep. James took the baton and we drove to the finish, running across as a team in 18 hours 30 minutes. It was a great race and a priviledge to run with the team. I look forward to doing it next year and giving Weber/BYU more of a run for their money.
One funny note on the last leg- half way down I caught a runner who didn't want me to pass him. He hung with me for a minute, then asked what team I was on. I answered and repeated the questionvto him. He told me he started at 8 am, and I told him we started at 5 pm. He immediately slowed down a ton and said, "then I don't feel so bad about letting you pass me." As I pulled away, he shouted "How old are you?" I answered, "28" and then heard him say, "Holy crap." I was too far away to ask what he meant by that, but since he was definitely younger than me, I think he felt I was real old. 28 is just reaching the distance running peak and I don't feel old, but I imagine I will have many more experiences like this in life.
Good race. I slept the whole drive home and for about 4-6 hours once we arrived. | 