Running a Relay

Well as I posted last time I was about to run this long relay race. It was one an awesome time. Here is a synopsis of what happened during that time.

Wednesday night I ate a left over hamburger that we had brought home from a restaurant. About 3 hours later my stomach started hurting. I ended up throwing up all night. I got food poisoning from that burger. Thursday I came to work late trying to recoup from being up all night and some people thought I looked really bad and should go to the doctor. So I went. With all my running I am always fighting dehydration and with that night I was really bad. So the doctor decided to give me an IV of saline solution. They poked me 3 times. 1st time didn’t get a vein right. 2nd time in my wrist but again they missed and I had a small bulge of saline solution. 3rd time was a charm in my elbow. They left. After about 2 minutes I called the nurse and my elbow was filling and bulging out as the vein blew. They sent me home to drink Gatorade all day and rest.

I did sleep that night but Friday morning the race started. I was there and getting ready for the race as I was the 1st leg of the race at 8am. My sister stopped by and wished me good luck and then went to join my parents and wife 2 miles down the road where they were camped to wish me good luck on this journey. I guess she told my wife and mom that I looked like warmed over death all white at the start line. They were happy but worried as I ran by them on my first 4 mile of the 195 we had to travel that day. I did that first leg in 7:40 pace and started our team out strong.

Our van finished and turned it over to the second van to run their 6 legs. They were all great runners and did well so we didn’t have much down time but enough to rest and get a little food. I took off on my second leg for a 4.9 mile stretch. As I left the exchange point it was about 1 mile of flat running and then 3.9 miles where I had to climp up over 1200 feet to an altitude of 9500 feet above sea level. I had a gal I saw in the distance and the race was on. I was going to catch her by the end of this leg if I died. Well I almost died but I caught her.

The team went through their legs again and we shot off to the next van exchange where I got to lay down around 10:30pm and slept till 1am out on the grass of a football field in a school yard under the stars. I got up to a team mate walking through a sea of other races all trying to sleep calling my name that our last runner from the other van was on his way and I needed to get ready and to the start line for my last leg of the relay race. I was there and ready but our runner got lost. He ran almost 2 extra miles and came in 20 minutes later then expected. He finally made it and I left out at 2:10am for my last leg of 6.5 miles of dark road. At this point there were only 5 teams ahead of me.

This leg in the dark with no other runners and nothing to look at was the longest and I think almost the hardest of the 3 legs. I still made it though in around 55 minutes and handed off to start the supporting my team role as I was done with my runs.

We let out our last runner from our van and rushed to make sure the other van was ready to finish the race. They were not quite ready and had to rush but their runner made the exchange and our van was finished. We took a picture of our 6 runners and then headed into the town where the race would finish to find a shower and relax for a couple hours. At around 10am we headed to the finish line to see our last team runner finish the race. When that runner comes into the track area our team joins him and runs the last couple hundred feet with him to finish as a team.

We as a team of 12 posted a time of 26 hours 31 minutes and 52 second for our 195 mile race. In the end we finished 13th overall out of 94 teams, and 3rd in our open class division out of 28 teams. As one of our runners put it “for a bunch of recreational runners out to have a good time we seemed to have a slight bit of competitiveness in us.” It was a great experience and our whole team was supportive of each other and there was not a bad word said to anyone from anyone on how they ran. It was all great run and you did awesome. We all even shared a hotel room 8 of us anyway and partied into the night.

This last weekend I went out with the group and we ran a hilly run that ended up being a half marathon in length. It was only the second time I have ran that far at one time and I did it in 1 hours 51 minutes making it my best time ever. I am now ready to take on a half marathon race and am starting to wonder if this fat nerd could do a marathon. I am going to have to think about that for a bit.

This week both my kids started back to school. My son just started high school and my daughter is the big kid in 6th grade at her elementary. Getting them ready and off to school is the fun part this week. Both seem to like school for the most part so it is more of just getting early mornings under control.

There Smart ass. Keep on me and I will try to post more often.