Blue Ridge Relay Recap for Paula: “We just lost a relay runner for BRR, interested? It will be fun!” they said. Well, actually Greg Jones said. I have never participated in a relay race, but not one to want to let down my friends and easy to cave to peer pressure, I agreed. Here are the stats for the race: 208 miles distance + 27,000 feet of elevation ÷ by 12 people / time it takes to complete this non-stop = Blue Ridge Relay. And here was my assignment: Relay runner #1, legs 1, 13 and 25, total 17.7 miles. Leg Miles Rating Elevation Gain (ft) Elevation Loss (ft) 1 4.0 Easy 102 1098 13 9.4 Very Hard 944 656 25 4.3 Moderate 351 315 Rating grades of the legs: Easy Moderate Hard, Very hard “Mountain Goat Hard” Even though we left Knoxville at 5:30 am, our team was running late to our start time of 9:30 am (enhancing my anxiety). I was the first runner, so pretty much immediately upon arrival and after sitting in the car for 3 hours, out the door I went and DOWN the hill for 4 miles. I had read about each of my legs, I was happy with the first one, it was a relatively short and downhill the whole time. I though “YAY! DOWNHILL! Piece of cake!” What I didn’t realize is when you are running down a hill for 4 miles, your quads are catching your body weight momentum the whole time…enter lactic acid in about 2 hours. I felt good the whole time while running, average pace was 7:30 min/mile. We rotated through the 6 runners in our van, then leap frogged to leg 13, my next leg. During this transition, I learned something new. Pre-race, I had looked at the legs I was to run online, I saw my 2nd leg & it was 7 miles rated as “hard.” I figured “YAY! A 7 miler! Cherokee Boulevard is ‘hard.’ Piece of cake!” Chris Davis, our team captain had put together a binder with a copy of each leg and the stats for us, I reviewed my 2nd leg and that was when the self-doubt erupted. My run was not the hard 7 miler I thought I was going to do. It was now a 9.4 miler rated as the 2nd to hardest level of “VERY HARD.” When I am training distance, adding on 2.4 isn’t a big deal, however I had NOT been training distance in addition to the grade was 9% elevation in areas. The profile was 3x the elevation profile of Atomicman run leg…in a shorter distance. When our team stopped for lunch earlier, I cornered Patrick Welsh for advice on a game plan and accepted my fate. It was about 5:45pm when I set out on this leg. I kept the first 2 miles which were just slightly rolling between an 8:30-9:00 pace. I knew that elevation really started to crank up at mile 3 and if I survived to mile 5, I had made it past the worst part. At mile 4, I had a moment of OMG NOT HALFWAY THROUGH, I AM NOT GOING TO MAKE IT. Somehow, I didn’t fall out and my legs rallied on miles 6-8. 1.4 to go. Uphill again now. UGH. By the time I finished up my leg, I wanted to scream obscenities, but I was frankly just too tired. Average pace time 10:00 min/mile on the nose. Meh.... My last leg was 4.3 miles rated as moderate. By this time, the lactic acid was rearing it’s ugly head. My stomach was upset. I was exhausted. I was sweaty/sticky (even though I changed clothes immediately after each leg). Our van pulled up to our park spot at about 2:15am. My next leg was anticipated to start around 4:18 am. The team smooshed up in the van for a nap, but I knew if I slept, it would be trouble for my run, so I stayed awake. I ate ½ a baked potato that the fire department was serving and paced around the parking area til close to my gun time. I took off on my last leg, it was WAY dark. Trees on both sides of the roads, no one in sight. Just the whistling of the breeze, a mountain stream and me. Surrounded by shadows. Of who knows what??? A GIANT OWL IS SWOOPING DOWN ON MY HEAD! OMG HELP! No, that wasn’t an owl. That was a tree branch in the shadow of the moon. This leg went pretty quickly & besides the owl hallucination, was really without incident. Average pace: 8:45 min/mile on trashed legs. I got to the van, changed my clothes, took another baby wipe bath and from that point forward, it was a floating in and out of consciousness blur of my teammates starting and finishing their legs. We started in Boone, VA, finished in Asheville, NC. I would like to know how I would do on this event if I had had a chance to train a few months ahead of time. Sleep deprivation also throws another surprise obstacle in that I wasnt expecting. I knew I would not really be able to sleep GREAT, but didnt understand the full effect. I had a wonderful opportunity to get to know 23 new running friends, test my outer limits of not distance training on a distance event & deprive my body of REM sleep for 36 hours. Good times!
Posted on: Sun, 07 Sep 2014 22:48:03 +0000
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