(Cross-posted from my blog).
After a phenomenal vacation in Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar, I flew home last Thursday afternoon, so I could run in the Hood to Coast relay on the "Crazies Going Coastal" team, some friends of mine who I ran with last year. During the rest of the year we hang out, run marathons together and train for them.
HTC: Yes, it got pretty hot during a couple of our legs, but I just sent an email to the members of our van - it was a great time. We were highly encouraging of each other, we didn't have any inflated egos (or deflated ones either), we triumphed over adversity more than once as a team, and we had fun! What could be better?
Triumphing over adversity? Let's see...
> Early in the race, leg 7 , while we were between Sandy and Gresham on country roads. Giorgio was running the leg and I was driving along following the other vans and a trail of runners. We're all casual, shooting the breeze, having fun. But it seemed like it was taking such a long time to get to the next runner's exchange. What's up with that? We then arrived at the runner's exchange point, but to our horror, we realize we are at the exchange for leg 9! Oh no! Giorgio will be finished and fuming at us at exchange 8! There is nothing worse than finishing a leg and then having nobody there to take the baton. I flipped the van around, and threaded my way back to the previous exchange, but this time, I was facing in to the stream of runners on this narrow country lane. Boy did I get some interesting gestures sent my way...
The good news is that we got back to exchange 8 without hitting anyone or anything, and Giorgio was still 45 seconds away from the exchange! Mark, who was running next, was so happy he tore off to do an 8:10 average pace for his leg!
> Our leg 10 runner, Joelle, came up lame in the middle of her first of three legs. She said she heard something pop. Now Joelle is a very experienced runner, veteran of many marathons, so she isn't new at this stuff. She made it in to the exchange, but it was soon clear that she would have to drop out for the rest of the race. Yikes!
Again, good news, we we very grateful for our friend Barb to agree to join our van at Midnight Friday and run Joelle's third leg. Barb is also an experienced Boston Qualifyer, but she has been working through an injury, and had spent the afternoon volunteering for something like 4 hours at that infamous exchange 8 in the sun and raced in to town to join us. And, we were able to deal with Joelle's middle leg fairly creatively...
And my jet lag didn't seem to be a problem. In fact, I think it helped the team. In the middle of the night (3AM, 4AM, 5AM), everyone was feeling pretty sleepy, but I was pretty much wide awake! So I was able to drive during those hours. At one point, I looked around and everyone was asleep in their seats, but I was still wide awake and chipper! Of course, by the end of my second leg at around 8AM, I was totally unconscious, and blacked out for the next three hours, so it was OK!
Dave