FINALLY it was time for our adventure to begin, so 8 out of our 11 team members met up in Taylor on Friday to begin our journey to Gonzales, TX, for the start of the relay Saturday morning. Unfortunately due to a family emergency we lost one team member, so we were down to 10. Our other two members would meet up with us before the race began. We weren't too worried about four of us having to add an extra leg - it was a much bigger disappointment for Andrew to not be joining us and I know it saddened him as well.
We had hours to kill, so we got ourselves ready and headed out to eat breakfast, pick up last minute supplies, and tag our vans.
When Karen showed up with my box of wine I knew the weekend would be spectacular!
SO WE BEGIN!!!!
On a side note, I have to mention our stop in Moulton to pick up some food for some of the guys. They were craving burgers....so burgers were grubbed. Jeff, Mr. Paleo Diet Boy, mentioned to me that he ate the bun on the hamburger. This is our dude who doesn't eat wheat anymore. I'm pretty sure I let my mouth hang open after that. I had a bad bad feeling that this boneheaded decision was going to come back to haunt him in a few hours. Yes, Jeff, I think I just called you a bonehead. Stay tuned for how that all turned out....
My first leg was #9, leading us into Flatonia. The wind totally sucked.....I know it was bugged the crap out of Red and Tony, and as Karen was running #8 to hand off to me I'm sure she was swearing under her breath. It's simply not easy to run directly into such strong winds, and Tony told me that it was brutal to try to breathe. In addition to the wind, I had to contend with what was probably the most technically difficult (although thankfully short, at only 3.86 miles) legs on the course....6 hills that seem to just keep coming. My plan was to do my best on the uphills and use the downhills to my advantage. I'm actually a very strong runner in hills and I was trying to remember that as I got pumped up for the leg.
Okay, so I kinda did great. It may have been the slowest leg of the day so far but I knew that would be the case. I was in the company of some very strong runners. There was a girl from another team who started the leg about 2 or 3 minutes ahead of me and my words to my teammates was something like this...."I'm gonna get her, just watch" I could see her about a quarter mile ahead of me when Karen handed off to me.
About a mile into the leg I hadn't caught her yet, but I was definitely closing the gap. Then the girl STARTED WALKING. Really? On a 3.86 mile leg? Yes, that's me being a racing snob, but really she shouldn't have WALKED. Did she really want me to catch her? As soon as I saw that I sped up. I was gonna get her, no doubt. I had already had two guys pass me and I needed to even the score (and thanks so much to my teammates for capturing one of the kills on camera - really nice, guys).
The wind was incredibly irritating but it was moving from north winds to northwest winds, so I used that to my advantage and sped up when I could. At about a mile to go the girl in front of me started walking again and was screwing around with her phone for some reason (why she had her phone is beyond me....). That was the only thing I needed to see and I pushed myself to finally catch her and move right on by. I did ask if she was okay since I'm not a total meanie - yes I am - and braced myself for the final hill. Oh my, that hill was awful. The wind came at me in a massive gust just as I was trying to crest the hill and just about stopped me in my tracks. Thankfully as soon as I crested it the wind shifted and I turned on my afterburners. Only about 3/4 of a mile to go and I knew I could maintain a much faster pace at this point. I realized that I had every capability of beating last year's time on that leg.
When I handed off to Brandon at Exchange 9 and stopped my watch I was truly shocked that I had beat last year by 7 seconds. I felt like I had contributed to the team. My expected time on that leg was in the 36 minute range and I did it in 33:43, an 8:44 pace....all in 20+ mph headwinds and on a hilly stretch. To say my confidence was boosted was an understatement!
What was even more exciting was that we got to now see what Brandon could do out on the course. He's our strongest and craziest runner. What he can accomplish when he sets his mind to it is just phenomenal. My teammates had told me that while I was running my leg one other team had smack-talked about their runner, saying she was a 6:30 miler and that Brandon wasn't going to pass her. Yeah, dudes...well Brandon runs 6 minute miles...so we'll see how that leg was going to pan out. After we got back into the vans and cruised down Hwy 90 on Brandon's leg we were so excited when we spied him about to catch up to this supposedly fast girl.
I managed to get the whole kill right on film and Brandon had a big ol' smile on his face as he was passing her. Just priceless.
Of course, later we come to see that this girl ended up running 3 legs back to back for a total of about 16 miles. But Brandon still killed her.
So now we're up to Leg 11, Erica's second leg. Erica ran her first leg at a ridiculous, envy-inducing 7:21 pace.
See....she's fast
She's a strong runner, but even that pace shocked the crap out of us. Erica wasn't on our 2010 team, but many of our runners already knew her from marathon training so they knew she was strong, but still....a 7:21 pace run? She definitely outdid herself on that one! Leg 11 was a longer leg than her first one so we certainly didn't expect something quite that fast, which was fine since we were absolutely blowing our expected times out of the water. What a nice surprise for us to see Team Boom Boom Pow on this leg. They have a very
After he passed by Erica and showed off his undies to her, it sure kept her motivated to keep him in her sights. The result? A 7:22 pace run. SWEET. Thanks, sexy cowboy!!
And there's the first installment on my race report....stay tuned for tomorrow's installment #2!!
You are actually making me laugh out loud. Ass Man is hysterical...loving it! Well done, once again, my friend!
ReplyDeleteWhoo Whoo! Go Texas! Steph, you just made my evening! And man, I think I need to find a relay team. I've never done that before. Looks FUN!
ReplyDeleteYou are so funny! I wonder if ESPN hires people to commentate running events... you could try out! :)
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