Day 2 of Relay del Sol Caught a couple hours of sleep at Exch 12, on the wrestling mats in the high school gym the exchange was at. It wasn't the best-quality sleep, but I definitely dozed a bit. Van 2 came in around 12:30AM. They too were exceeding their projected times, and they managed to close the gap on the Google team by a few minutes. I can't remember exactly, but I think we were about 4 minutes behind after 12 legs. Dave, Clyde, Sasha, and Dan all ran exceptionally well again, to start our next series (leg 13-18), but Google ran even better, and by the time I got the baton for Leg 17, we were slightly over 10 minutes back. I could be wrong here, as my memory is fuzzy. I'm sure Sasha will know. My Leg 17 was around 3:30AM, so it was still, and around 50 degrees temperature. No wind. Good conditions for fast running. This leg, though, was 7.3 miles and on a steady 1% uphill grade that gained 384 ft over 7.3 miles. I was a bit concerned about it, but once I started running, it didn't seem very bad at all. I guess all those Ogden Striders races have served a purpose in that I can't feel hills anymore until they are over 6% in gradient. I wanted to get another threshold workout out of this leg, and just let my body guide my pace and the garmin report it. For the first half of the leg I was running consistent 5:40 miles. I was feeling very good, so I pushed it a little harder on the second half of the leg to 5:35 miles. I lost 15 seconds slowing down and even stopping for various stop lights, but other than that, no mishaps. The leg ended up being about a block long, as exchange 17 was a bit further than my maps had it. Oh well. Ended up averaging 5:40/mile for the leg. By this point in the race, we were passing teams that started before us, and I mananged to pass 4 other runners during this leg. Better yet, I was able to close the gap on Google by 4 or 5 minutes. I was very happy with how it went, and felt that I would have enough juice for a good V02Max workout on the final leg. Jon ran very well on his leg, and we gave the baton to Van 2. Time for another siesta. This time I didn't have much time to sleep, but did managed to close my eyes for a few minutes in the van while sitting at the Exch 24 parking lot. Van 2, meanwhile, ran the legs of their lives and amazingly closed the gap on Google to 20 seconds by the time they handed the baton back to us. Over 110 miles into it, we had a true race on our hands! We thought that if we could just keep things close during our final leg set, we could at least give Van 2 a chance to win it. Google's Van 1 was definitely faster than our Van 1, but we hoped to do some damage control. It was light again by this point. Dave, Clyde, Sasha, and Dan all ran their hearts out, and when I received the baton, we were about 4 minutes back. This was a lesser spread than our previous sets, so we were "outperforming" them in a way, by reducing the relative difference. My last leg (28) looked to be quite fast, judging by the profile. It was only 3.4 miles and mostly downhill, with about a 2.5% gradient. This is somewhere between Top of Utah and St. George, as far as downhills go. I've been running downhill well so far this year, and hoped to hit 5:00 miles or under for this last leg, and leave whatever energy I had left out on there on the road. Temperature was about 70 degrees, so a little warm, but not too bad. However, there was a noticeable headwind, not a total killer, but big enough to slow me down a bit. I averaged 5:06/mile, which I was happy with considering the headwind. I mananged to dip under 5:00/mile pace during the last half mile. Plus I closed the gap on Google by about a minute. Jon maintained the gap, so Van 2 started their last set of legs only 3 minutes behind. However, we did not have our cheesy, stereotypical sports movie ending. Google pulled away from our rag-tag bunch during the last 6 legs and won by about 10 minutes. They ran 18:59:39, which is 6:05/mile for 187 miles. We ended up around 19:10:57, which is 6:08/mile. We finished 45 minutes ahead of our original projected time, meaning everyone ran incredibly awesome as a team. Third place was an hour and 40 minutes behind us. Results are here.
Not only did the race end not end like a Hollywood sports movie, but Google did not turn out to be the Hollywood sports movie villain either. They did not cheat, try to sabotague us, or wear evil mustaches. Rather, they were very nice, were great competitors, and gracious winners. We enjoyed talking to them throughout the race and afterwards at the finish line. Great job Google! Cody and James (who were in Van 2) may write about this to verify, but
it seemed like we gave it our all during the middle of the race just to
surge up to Google and stay as close as we did. By the very end, Google
had a bit more gas left in the tank for a knockout punch. But this is how
to race, whether it be a relay or individual event. Sometimes it's
necessary to take a gamble and surge hard just to stay with someone,
and they pray that either you can do it one more time or that the
competitor is hurting worse than you are. But races are often won by
taking chances like that. And there was certainly nothing to lose.
I also think that one reason (besides altititude reduction, nice weather, and good training) that we all ran so well is that during events like relays you can relax and run without pressure. You can try things you wouldn't normally try, as there is really no consequence. Yes, we competed with Google, but really it was a big game, one that was fun to play. Being able to relax and "play the game" without worrying about PR's and such I think helps people to run faster in some cases. Just my opinion. Check out the blogs of Cody, Dan, Dave, Jon, James, Clyde, and Sasha for their personal experiences and thoughts about the relay. (Burn: 93 miles) (Adrenaline orange: 166 miles)
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