Finally getting around to my running blog after being gone all week following the WB relay with no access to internet.....
Not sure where to start...this is the 1st of 2 WBR related entries, see tomorrow for last 2 leg reports.
I had a great time this year at the relay, I do believe this was the funnest relay for me of all the 3 relays I've done with the 2slow2win2dumb2quit team. Not only did our team win our classification (sub-masters male) and finish with our best time yet with just over 3 hours 16 minutes, but I also had my best personal performance and was for the 1st time ever able to achieve the goal of meeting or exceeding all of my leg time projections. Of course it helped quite a bit that I was running a bit easier set of legs than the past 2 years but I'll take it! It was also great to get to know the new guys on the team this year and especially to be able to hand off to my old high school buddy and long-time running hero and mentor Terry.
I was more than ready to run my 1st leg Friday after tapering for the week and not having run the day before. I had been feeling great the couple weeks leading up to the race and was hoping to be at a peak.
Leg 8 - East of Eden: 3.2 miles, time: 22:33 (7:03 pace)
This is one leg where I was certain I could beat my projected time (23:38) by possibly as much as 2-3 minutes. My big concerns were the heat and going out too fast. It was still pretty hot when I started but it had cooled down some from earlier in the day. I suspect temps were somewhere in the 80's. Scott looked strong coming in from leg 7 and I was excited to finally begin.
Just before starting my leg I told Terry my plan of going out conservative and running the first mile around 7:00 pace and then hopefully pushing it the last mile or 2 to average around 6:45 - 6:50. But like an idiot I promptly thru all that out the window and went out too fast. Part of the problem was that I had my Garmin on the main screen watching instantaneous pace but thinking I was looking at my custom screen looking at average mile pace. I think this caused my pace to fluctuate quite a bit the first .75 miles before I realized what was going on and switched to my custom screen. Unfortunately that damage had been done and I finished mile 1 with the garmin reporting a 6:40 pace.
I had actually felt pretty good the first mile and the heat didn't seem to be bothering me. It helped alot that I had soaked my shirt and hat a bit in cold water just before starting. I slowed down some starting the 2nd mile and felt good for about a 1/4 mile when the heat and the switch from slightly downhill to slightly uphill began to take it's toll. I started feeling lousy around 1.5 miles and was not happy I was not quite even 1/2 way done. It certainly didn't help that other than the 1st 1/2 mile of the leg, I was running down a long straight road with the finish line seemingly miles a way. I was hoping to have a few runners nearby to motivate me but ended up only seeing 1 female runner who I passed sometime in the 2nd or 3rd mile. Starting fading by the ending of this mile registering a 6:58 pace.
The last 1.2 miles were awful, similar I suppose to a typical 5K but maybe a bit worse because of the heat and because I went out too fast. After what seemed like an eternity I finally hobbled into the exchange and was very relieved to hand off to Terry running at around a 7:20-7:30 pace. Finished with a time of 22:33 which luckily was still just over a minute faster than my projected time. While I was happy to have beaten my projected time I was disappointed with the way I ran it and thought I could/should have done better.
I ended up feeling a bit loopy after this leg and couldn't think straight for a while. I'm not sure what my teamates were thinking as I kept walking for quite a ways past the exchange trying to cool down. For some reason I thought our van was up ahead a ways when in reality it was near the handoff point. Seemed like I walked around aimlessly for a couple of minutes and almost entered the vehicles of some other teams thinking it was our team van before finally collecting my senses and heading back to the correct vehicle.
Usually my last leg is my least favorite of the relay but in this case this first leg wins that prize.
I enjoyed watching the rest of my van 2 teamates finish out their 1st leg in strong fashion with Will running particularly strong to finish out our first set into Snow Basin. It was also great to enjoy the cool mountain air and scenery as temps dropped significantly off the high 90's of the day to something more in the 50's up in the mountains at night.
After handing off to Van 1 at Snow Basin we made the longer than expected drive over to East Canyon for some Fazollis and an attempt at some sleep. We had been told to drive on the race course as opposed to the main highway and this made for a slow drive with all the Van 1 commotion and such. We finally got to East Canyon and experienced more commotion as this major exchange was especially congested and chaotic with the higher number of teams this year. We finally found a parking spot and headed over to eat and found a fairly long line at Fazollis. I realized that I didn't really have all that much time before I would be running again so I opted to eat some of the light food I had in the van and try to get a little extra sleep. | 