Wasatch Back Relay time! Met at Paul's house, where there were a bunch of guys I had never met before. Loaded up the van and went to the start. My van had Mitch, Steve H, James B, Dustin, Chad, and Paul as driver. Van 2 had Wildbull, Steve O, Kory, Steve C, James M, and Andrew, with Cody as driver. I was runner 6. First 4 legs for our van were very hot, but Chad (runner 5) and myself didn't have it too bad thanks to higher elevation and later hour. I started just a hair after 8 pm. Chad had moved us into 3rd place on his leg, and I never saw any of the 5:00 teams the whole race while running. We did start passing 4:00 teams by the 3rd leg, which usually doesn't happen until at least leg 6 or so.
My first leg was dirt and had a 1.3 mile climb of 250 feet, followed by a screaming descent of about 1300 feet in 3 miles, then a few hundred more in the last 3 miles. I have always wanted to do this leg and was really looking forward to it. I averaged about 6:30 pace on the climb, then flew on the downhill- 2 miles in 10:01, which is probably my PR. Road was rather rough, bad enough that I was going about as fast as the vans, so I absolutely loved it. I really pushed it and my legs were tired by mile 4. I did my best to hold the pace to the end, finishing in about 5:48 pace for the last few miles. Total time was 39:00 for the 6.9 miles, 5:40 avg and 1 minute slow from prediction. I was happy nonetheless- I saw Shadley (White runner 6) and discovered I had beat his time by 4 seconds, which was a big surprise to me, though he smoked me on the downhill by 30 seconds. Ate some food and drove to exchange 12.
AM- 4 easy naked miles with 6 strides.
768- 44, Ascend- 307
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