Relays, Utility Poles and Teamwork
Yesterday was a first. I did my 1st relay race since I started running. The Mt. Si relay is something that Coach Lesley participates in annually, so I figured I would give it a shot. I was a little nervous going in not because of the miles or the legs that Lesley had signed me up for, but wasn't sure how my body was going to respond in between legs and the 2nd leg I was slated to run.
The deal with this relay is that you have teams of 5 people, and you are assigned 2 legs for a total of 10 legs. If you run leg 1, you get leg 6. If you run leg 2, you get leg 7 – BTW, the 2 and 7 legs were by far the toughest legs combined. OK. I was assigned leg 5, which meant I also got the anchor leg. No pressure, right? Well leg 5 looked pretty tough given that it went up 500 ft. over 6 miles (most of the climb actually happened in the 1st mile). The thing with relays is that you are there from beginning to end and you don't just show up for your leg (unless you are a last minute fill-in, which we needed on the other Coach Lesley team) so it's a long day.
Given that there was some elevation involved and the weather is frisky in terms of it could always go one way or the other, I spent about an hour just packing for the race on Saturday night. I took less on a recent trip to SF than I did for this race!! You need 2 sets of racing gear so you are not sitting in soaking wet clothes for the 3+ hours in between your legs plus food, sports drinks, lotion, Purell, etc.
Alarm went off at 4:45am and then a 45-minute drive out to Snoqualmie for the meet-up, etc. With the race starting at 6:30am, we needed about 45 minutes to get checked-in and get the cars loaded up the right way so certain things were more accessible than other items. Carol was in charge of all of this. Now the other thing that had to be managed that with a 6:30am race time and our expected pace, I wasn't expected to start until about 10:30am. Once the 3rd leg started, I figured I would be good to eat. Morning progressed and at the start of the 4th leg, I noticed it was cooler than expected, so I decided to switch to a turtleneck.
About 10 minutes before I think Libby (leg 4/9 owner) is going to finish, I get out of the car to start warming-up, and as luck would have it, the sun starts to come out and it feels about 7 degrees warmer. Unfortunately I don't have time to change back into the other shirt, so I am a bit overdressed as Libby comes in strong to hand things off to me.
I knew my leg was predominantly uphill, so I just tried to keep it slow and steady. My Garmin was losing its signal in the trees so it was hard for me to know what pace I was really going. All I knew is that the bulk of the uphill was in the 1st mile and a quarter of the leg, so when I saw the marshall at the top and she told me the worst was behind me, I was psyched. It was still overall uphill, but way more gradual (or so it seemed – it is all relative). I was wrapping up mile 5 on what ended up being a very pretty trail when I saw some more marshalls pointing me in a sharp right direction and upwards. So stopped short and just walked up some uneven stairs and then had the last mile and a half to go on the main road.
I was getting tired at this stage because I was running pretty hard – my pace also slowed up a bit. I just wanted the leg to be done so I had to resort to the unthinkable. That's right – started counting utility poles. Seemed like every utility pole was 1/10th of a mile. Told myself to only check my watch to see remaining distance every 2nd pole and sure enough, I hit the very quick downhill for the last 1/10th of a mile. Hand off to Dana and all important cool down after a tough run of 56:46 in 6.4 miles (8:54 pace).
As I was cooling down (thanks to Mike L. for the tips), I was thinking about the pace and was pretty pleased with the effort. I knew I was tired, but I just wanted to run a little before we headed to the next exchange. In the time I was gone, Dana found the radio station broadcasting the Masters and Marc started texting me play-by-play updates about the golf and the Yankees. All good. We get to the next exchange, I change and get a chance to stretch for 10 minutes. Ahh…..
About an hour later, I eat again and am very content cheering on my friends, listening to the Masters and getting text updates from Marc. We're all just making sure that we're eating enough and properly stretching between legs. The weather is good, so not much to complain about. Right before my 2nd leg, we had a little communication mix-up, so I got to the start of my leg in the nick of time for me to start my leg at around 2:40pm. I'll admit that with the last minute rushing around plus me having the last leg that I was pretty amped up.
Libby comes in with a super strong pace again and I was off. About 5 minutes in, I felt side stitches coming on and thought "WTH? Why do I have these?" Then I looked at my watch and saw a pace of 7:50/mile on the watch. Oops – better bring it back a few pips. So I settled in and tried hard to stay focused with a goal of finishing strong. The last portion of my next race is going to have a long flat bit at the end so I needed to stay mentally in the game. Cheesy, but true.
I make the turn to the school (finish line) and it was one of those finish lines that had a roundabout way of finishing, which is really ****ing annoying when you think you are almost done. I finish and was pretty happy with my overall time as the pace I kept was better than any time I had ever done around Greenlake (similarly flat). I was beat.
Had a great dinner with Marc – chicken poached in red wine with some flageolets and charmoula. Had a chopped salad with some tarragon. He decided to uncork a 2005 Foradori from the fine folks from Italian Wine Merchants. After that, the bottom half of my body was pretty weak so after a re-cap with Lesley, an ice bath, some Masters and Yankees highlights (yes, I was also very happy about both outcomes), my bed was waiting. But a good day in many respects.
One of my running friends in the Northeast wanted to get my take on my 1st relay, so here it is – I had a fun time and it was with a good group of people. But it's a long day (almost 12 hours from when I woke up to when I got back home) and on a Sunday, it's a bit much if I have a full work week ahead. Now if it was on a Saturday… that would have been great. To compare – even when I run a ½ marathon, I am done by 10am at the latest depending on the start time so I have time to relax and even do some things in the afternoon.
That said, I am glad that I tried it out – we ended up having great weather and a lot of people surprised themselves with excellent times on the course, so congrats to all of them for a great effort! Special congrats to Lesley for running with a client in the ultramarathon and then crewing 2 teams of clients. Uh hello superwoman!