This was a fun race. It was a 5 person team 50 mile relay. Our family put together 2 teams. The team I was on only had 4 runners. My brother and I ran 3 of the legs and my sister and Jessie (My brother's friend) both ran 2 legs. We named our team Run for your life. So we dressed as zombie hunters and counted each team we passed as a kill. My first Leg was Leg 2: It was a 5 mile leg on the road with several decent hills. My goal was to have a 7:30/mile pace average. I finished the 5.22 miles in 39:17 for an average pace of 7:31/mile. I was able to get 5 kills on this leg. For my next run I did 2 legs back to back. leg 8 & 9: Leg 8 had a long gradual hill at the first. I was able to get up that without too much trouble. I was trying to take it a little slower so I would have enough left to finish the end of the course because of the upcoming hills. I was doing this by keeping my heart rate at less than 160. The course was pretty flat for the next couple of miles and I was able to go fairly quick (8:25/mile) and catch 7 people. Just at the end of leg 8 there was a pretty steep hill (11% grade) it was less than a quarter of a mile and I was almost able to catch another 2 people right there unfortunately the back site was downhill and then was the exchange and another steeper and longer hill (just over 0.25 miles and 11% grade) so they exchanged with fresh legs and I lost ground on them from then on. I thought those were the only hills on this run when I was planning on it but the course just continued to gain elevation gradually (another 290 vert over the last 4 miles) and I wasn't ready for it. I was pretty happy that I was able to continue running through the whole course my average pace for these legs turned out to be 8:53 (my goal was 8:30). I'm glad I did this race it was more of a stretch for me than I thought it would be with the extra leg and having the hardest leg on the course. I hope I can get ready for the speedgoat now since the elevation on this was nothing spectacular.
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