Logan, Adam and I drove down to St. George on Thursday evening and met up with Dave, Clyde, Nick, and Steve Hooper. We drove to Vegas that night and stayed in a hotel. I didn't sleep very good because of being sick and coughing all night. I was wondering if I should have come or not and didn't know if I could even run very well. I was hoping to kick this flu thing days ago but it has seemed to get worse instead of better. We got up this morning and did a 5 mile run in downtown Vegas. I coughed a lot and was quite miserable on a run that was supposed to be easy. I was getting more worried about my performance in the relay. I was also bummed because this was something that I had been working toward and looking forward to for months. We traveled to Boulder and ate breakfast and then went on to Wikkenburg. We made it in plenty of time to hang out for a few hours at the start.. I still wasn't feeling any better but had told myself that I wouldn't let the team down even if it killed me. It was a beautiful day and had to be in the 80s. I was hoping the warm weather would help me out. The rest Steve and I checked the team in and switched Sean for Walter. The rest of the team got there an hour os so early and all hung out until the start. Google was was back with a similar team as last year, minus their two Ringers. A running store from Southern Arizona looked like they had some really good runners and might give us some competition. Dave started out the first van, which I was part of, and the rest of us went ahead to the next exchange. After the first exchange the running store was neck and neck with us, but no worries because Logan and Nick were running back to back legs. Logan dropped his guys pretty good, followed by Nick, Clyde, and Walter all running solid legs. By the time I was on we had a lead of over 4 minutes. I warmed up for 3/4 of a mile and coughed my head off the whole time. I had a bad headache because of the coughing, and the headlamp didn't help my cause either. Walter came in strong and handed me the wrist band about 8:30pm and I was off. My leg was supposed to have some good up and down (mostly uphill) in it. My first mile started down but finished starting a big climb (5:52). I wasn't coughing, so that was good, but my head was killing me. The next mile was a big climb up the mountain, and the shoulder to the road disappeared (6:24). The next hill was the killer (6:41), I was slowing down but my effort was maxed out, it seemed like it would never end. The next . 9 was also hard, started to drop at the end (6:10). The last mile was mostly downhill into the state park and exchange, but I had a hard time switching gears (5:38). I muffed the exchange with Adam because I ran into the left shute and he was in the right, but nothing too bad. I went and hacked my left lung up after the run, and felt like I was going to die for a few minutes. I was happy to find that I ran the pace I was supposed to run, and that I actually put a whole minute on my guy from the running store. We were up by 5:40 on the running store when our van was done. We drove down to subway for dinner before heading out to the next major exchange. I was just hoping to live through my next leg which I knew would be the toughest. (Tangent-233 miles)
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