Race #14 – Blue Ridge Relay – part III

Check out part I and part II.


When we got to exchange zone 30, it was around 5:00am and we were all exhausted, but also starving, so the idea of a pancake breakfast was really enticing! We actually got to the breakfast area before they were ready, so we hung out at the picnic tables for a few minutes and then we got a plateful of pancakes and a big sausage patty along with a fruit cup and orange juice – well worth the $5 price! As we dug into the great food, we quickly realized that sleep was going to win out very shortly. They had opened up a church for us to sleep in and half of us went into the church with some people sleeping on pews and two of us sleeping in what we thought was an alcove at the back of church – as we found out a few hours later, we were actually sleeping in the main entrance of the church, but luckily neither of us got stepped on when the door opened. 

We were expecting the other van to finish somewhere between 9:30 – 10:00, so when I woke up around 8:00, feeling amazingly refreshed, I decided I would just get up and see if I could get ahold of the other van to see how they were doing. One of the challenges with this race is that it’s in the middle of the mountains, so cell phone coverage is spotty and internet connection is virtually non-existent, so while we had a spreadsheet that we could update after every runner finished and it would let us know the estimated time the next runner would be coming in, we weren’t able to use it too much and relied on texts and phone calls instead. The van was right on track and came in at 9:45am – only 6 more legs to go! Our van had two Mountain Goat Hard legs in our last set and the ladies who ran them definitely crushed it! First up was a 6.5 miler which started going uphill around mile 1.5 and never stopped with the grade ranging from 5-6% for 5 miles. Driving up that hill I was glad I was going to be starting at the top and not doing the switchbacks (it reminded me a lot of The Bear). While we were waiting at the top, we got to see someone make it to the top, handoff to their teammate and immediately throw up… this leg was no joke and our runner did an amazing job! I was up next and I had 9.5 miles of almost pure downhill. I was keeping a really good pace and stuck with my 4 minutes running and 1 minute walking as I started the leg. The good news is that the downhill half I did this summer turned out to be really good training for this leg! I passed two people while we were in the woods, but after about 5 miles, we came out of the woods and into the mid-day sun which really slowed me down. I ended up adjusting my run/walk ratio to take advantage of the shade as much as possible and the two people I passed ended up catching up with me around mile 7 or 8. It was disappointing not to be able to hang on those last few miles, but I think it was the right strategy for me because I would have struggled in the heat regardless of how fast I had run in the first few miles. 

  • Mile 1 – 8:05
  • Mile 2 – 8:20
  • Mile 3 – 8:31
  • Mile 4 – 9:10 <– GU
  • Mile 5 – 7:59
  • Mile 6 – 9:40
  • Mile 7 – 9:45
  • Mile 8 – 10:10 <– GU
  • Mile 9 – 10:59
  • Last .5 – 8:00
Overall average: 9:09

After my leg was the other Mountain Goat Hard leg that was about 3.5 miles of uphill to start the run, including about a mile of 8-13% grade, followed by 1.7 miles of downhill… talk about another rough leg! We made our way through the last few legs and ended in downtown Asheville trying to dodge the impending rain storm. We met up with the rest of our team and waited for our final runner and crossed the line together. We ended up finishing the 208 miles in 33:22:35 with an overall pace of 9:35 / mile, just 15 minutes behind our 10k pace! 


Overall, there was great scenery throughout the course and awesome volunteers at each of the exchange zones. The few downsides to this race would be the one exchange zone that was at a fire station that had traffic backed up along the road, the lack of any type of actual finish line festival and only getting a magnet for finishing (where’s my medal?). Definitely nothing that would stop me from doing the race again if I was asked to! 

Have you ever done the Blue Ridge Relay or another relay race? 

Race #14 – Blue Ridge Relay – part II

Check out part I here.

After we finished our first set of legs, Van 2 trekked into Boone to grab dinner at Subway and pick up a few supplies at Wal-Mart. I have to say, there’s really nothing quite like people watching at Wal-Mart in a rural town. Since all 6 of us had gotten rained on during our first legs, we decided to pick up some towels along with some additional bagels and bananas before we headed to exchange zone #18. 


Van 1 had over 40 miles to cover before we would run again, so we set up camp at the exchange zone and tried to get a few hours of rest. We also re-decorated our van since the rain had washed almost everything off.
The tent ended up being a great idea – it gave us plenty of room to stretch out and allowed more people to actually get sleep than we’ve had in previous relay races. That’s definitely something we will add to our packing list for future relays! 

As we were heading to the exchange zone where I would be starting out from, we could see red flashing lights in the distance and a lot of cars backed up on the road. It was a little scary at first because it looked like we were coming up on the scene of an accident, but it turned out to be the fire station where my exchange zone was – all of the relay vans had to park along the side of the road, so the firemen were holding up traffic so that the vans could back into spots next to the road. After we told the first fireman we needed to park, he directed us to a second fireman up the road a couple hundred yards who asked “Yinz gonna park here or go through?” … I didn’t expect to hear any Pittsburghese in the middle of the woods in NC! 

Runner #7 only had 4.4 miles to do on her leg, so I was a little nervous about not being able to get out and stretched in time to meet her, but we ended up having an extra 10 minutes or so after we parked before she came in, so that was fine. My second leg was 7.3 miles with a hill that lasted just over a mile and ranged from 5-7% grade. Of course, this hill was also at the end of this leg, very similar to my first leg. I got on the road just before midnight.

  • Mile 1 – 9:35
  • Mile 2 – 9:35
  • Mile 3 – 10:20
  • Mile 4 – 11:30
  • Mile 5 – 10:57
  • Mile 6 – 13:19
  • Mile 7 – 10:04
  • Last .3 – 8:30


Overall pace: 10:41

I really struggled on Mile 6 and it definitely shows in my numbers… overall, I think the leg went well considering the terrain and I was definitely glad to be running that one at night – I can’t imagine running that hill in the heat of the day! I did get yelled at by some locals in a pickup truck as I was climbing on of the hills. The good news is that their truck was so loud I could hear which direction it was going, so I would have had plenty of warning if they decided to turn around and come back to bother me. Apparently on one of the legs there was someone on the course jumping out to scare people – I didn’t hear anything about it from any of our runners, but that’s definitely not something you like to hear.

After my leg, I made a point to be the navigator for the rest of our van’s legs so that I would force myself to stay awake and keep hydrating and it worked out well. One of the most interesting exchange zone setups was at a garage and all of the vans just parked along the side of the road (we had to be careful not to hit runners as we entered & exited the van) and the one portapotty that they had was still set up on the trailer that it was brought in on, so it was like walking on stage to go up to the bathroom – it was very weird and I saw a few teams taking pictures as if their runner was on a stage.

We, thankfully, had an uneventful night and after everyone had done their second leg, we were still hanging onto a 3 minute lead over our original estimated finish time. One caveat to the estimated finish time is that we were using our 10k pace, which is what everyone is asked to submit in order to figure out when your team will start running and while we padded our time slightly because we knew we would all be running double or triple that distance, everyone put in a pace they were comfortable training at for 8-10 miles (which, again, is about half of the total distance we would run over the course of the race). 

We handed off to Van 1 at exchange zone 24 and headed on to exchange zone 30 where we were all looking forward to a pancake breakfast and more sleep while Van 1 ran a little over 37 miles on their final legs of the race.

Check back tomorrow for the final part of the Blue Ridge Relay recap!



Race #14: Blue Ridge Relay – part I

Last weekend was the Blue Ridge Relay which starts near Mount Rogers in Virginia and ends 208 miles later in Asheville, NC. I was the captain of the team for this round and we officially changed our name from the Key West Relay to Gotta Crush on You for this race and I designed the logo for our shirts (on the left). 

Since our team was able to meet in Charlotte and we were only a couple of hours from the start of the race, our vans split up with only Van 1 traveling to the start line and Van 2 stayed in Charlotte the night before. Our start time was 6:30am, so it was still a very early start for that van and the ran into a few issues with the directions and the windy country roads leading to the start line, so they got there just in time to sprint to the starting line and run after the 6:30 starting wave. Our van, Van 2, started at exchange zone 6 which was near West Jefferson, NC. We got there early and spent some time decorating our van while we waited for our teammates to arrive.

I was runner #8 for our team, which meant I had almost 20 miles over my 3 legs and the third longest distance on the team. Some of my teammates had a lot more elevation gain than I did (especially after my third leg), so I was more than willing to trade more miles for fewer hills! 

Our team came in strong after Van 1’s first set of legs and by the time it was my turn, we were 20 minutes ahead of where we expected to be. I started off just before noon and it was 73 degrees and rainy. My first leg was by far my easiest, with only 3.1 miles to do:

Mile 1 – 8:51
Mile 2 – 10:02
Mile 3 – 9:37
Last .1 – 7:30

Overall pace: 9:24

It really was a good leg to start off on and I tried to keep myself in check and not go out too fast since I knew that I would have over 16.5 miles to run after that. I stuck with my 4 minutes running, 1 minute walking routine throughout the leg and it definitely helped on that 9% grade of a hill near the end and I got to enjoy a little bit of a downhill at the end of the leg to finish strong. 

By the end of everyone’s first leg, we were still 20 minutes ahead of our estimated finish time and we were going strong as we headed into the evening hours. 

Stay tuned for a recap of legs #2 and #3 coming soon!