6AM Leg #23. This leg starts in Wanship and goes along Rockport reservoir. A few small climbs but pretty easy. Only got an hour of sleep and was driving and helping other teammates during their legs before running mine. Needles to say I was a little tired, but had another solid run. The team we passed yesterday was only about 1 minute behind us still, so I had to hold off their runner on this leg. Normally this wouldn't have concerned me(he's is decent shape from hiking the backcountry to ski all winter, but has a few extra pounds and is not a runner), but I ran with a crash pad. This really was not fun. It's weighs about 12 lbs, is not wind resistant at all and I had to hold the straps to keep it from bouncing around so couldn't use my arms the whole way. This turned out to be pretty rough, but mission accomplished..I held our lead and finished the course without dying. 5.5 miles in 44:00. 430 vertical ft and carryinga 12 lb. crash pad
3:45PM Leg #35. Quick up hill from Guardsman pass to thundering downhill to short steep climb to Royal St. and steep downhill to the base of Deer Valley resort. I'm usually pretty good at steep downhills, but my legs were starting to feel the long uphill from the climbing yesterday and it was rather warm and a bit windy. I ran with a PFD, which wasn't too bad and carrying 2 paddles that weighed out 3 lbs each. that doesn't sound like a lot of weight, but when you're feeling stiff and tired and trying to hammer it makes for quite a challenge. I actually felt ok after the first mile was over set in a good flying downhill/jumping off a cliff pace. The team we were battling against had passed us earlier, but were only about 3 minutes up, so everyone was trying to get me stoked to catch them. I said I'd do my best but no promises. Lucky me, my best allowed to catch their runner less than halfway thru the leg and beat him to the finish by about 5 minutes. I also ran down another one of our teams @ mile 5 and was able to beat them by about 2 minutes to put us into 2nd place! Unfortunately this teams next runner was very fast and beat our runner to the finish, but we were able to hold off the other team so we finished 3rd out of the 4 teams! 7 miles, 47:00?(forgot to stop my watch). 336 vertical ft climbed and 2,066 ft of dowhill(It was steep!)
Gotta feel good about the 3rd place finish considering we had people running with all kinds of crazy stuff...1 guy wore a pair of XC skis for 7 miles, a few other people besides me ran with the crash pad and 2 guys ran with a 13 foot kayak! No joke this was the craziest thing I have ever seen and they were holding about 12 min/mile with it. Insane! 
Me with a crash pad.
| 