- 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
Tag: BRR
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.
- 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!