Michael & Liz are Bloggable

Friday and Saturday I ran in the Blue Ridge Relay. I have so much to tell but I thought I'd first just post on the facts of the race. We started at 9AM on Friday morning and it took us 28 hours and 13 minutes and we finished at 1:13 PM on Saturday afternoon. I am still waiting for the results to see how we did against other teams. Since teams start anywhere between 6:30AM until 1PM on Friday, there's no way to tell how we did. I do know the winning team was a team of only 6 runners and they finished in under 22 hours and beat the team that hasn't lost in 4 years. That's just insane. As far as how I did individually, here were the 3 legs that I ran in the race:

Leg 1:
This was without a doubt the easiest leg in the whole race. I feel like my 3 legs together were the easiest ones to do compared to the rest of the team but I guess that's OK. This leg was the first one so I ran it at 9AM. I was fresh and it was 4 miles which is relatively small compared to all the other legs. It was also straight downhill. 2 miles of it was actually so steep that I had to slow myself up so I wouldn't run out of control and fall or something. My philosophy was to just run it as fast as I possibly could stand without holding anything back. 4 miles downhill? I can't just lallygag through that. It turned out to be a pretty successful plan because I finished the 4 miles in 24:18. That's a 6:04 mile which is the fastest I've run anything since High School track and field. Here is the chart from the first leg (click it to see it bigger):


Leg 13:
This leg I ran at 6:30PM on Friday evening and it was quite a jump from an easy 4 miles to go to a hard 7.1 miles. The first 2.5 miles are straight up a hill and then the next 2.5 miles were downhill and then the last 2 miles were rolling hills. It was certainly not an easy run at all. That hill was a beast. I passed roughly 5 people on the way up and a few people going down. I got a little bit of a pride out of the fact that I was able to run it faster than the people around me. I went into it just saying I want to hit 8 minutes per mile and I did just that. I finished the 7.1 miles in 56:26 which is a 7:56 pace. The other thing that made this run difficult is that the road was under construction. They had torn it up so they could replace the surface. Not sure I can explain it any better than that. So the entire run I was trying to place my foot in spots that were smooth and not gravel-like and also so I wouldn't hurt the bottom of my feet from the roughness. I spent about 5 miles of this leg just watching where I placed my feet. It's hard to run fast and run cautiously at the same time.

One thing I have to say about the 2.5 mile climb uphill, it really got me thinking about how those are the moments when you really find yourself. If I'm in physical pain and it's dumb to keep going, of course I'm smart enough to stop. That's not determination, that's just ignorance. But in climbing that hill, I was only tired from my own self-infliction. I was climbing a massive hill and everything tired in my body says "this is ridiculous, just walk a bit and catch your breath". Of course I could give in easy and walk and not tell anyone, but it's those "grind it out moments" that you really find out what kind of heart you've got on the inside. When I do these difficult things, I try to keep those thoughts in mind, and it really motivated me to keep fighting.

Here is the chart from the second leg (click it to see it bigger):


Leg 25:
My last one wasn't too terribly difficult except for the fact that I started it at 2:30AM. It was 4.3 miles relatively flat with a half mile uphill climb at the end. Again I only wanted to hit 8 minutes per mile. I finished this leg in 33:20 which was a 7:45 minute per mile pace. I'm super proud of that because I had no downhills to take advantage of. The way you run in the dark is you have a headlamp on your forehead to light the way, you wear a reflective vest for cars to see you, and you also have a blinking red light on the front of your waist and another on the back of your waist. It's actually really impressive how easy it was to see where you were going and also for cars to see you. Safety was not a concern at all.

It did however make me feel like I was shooting a scene from the Blair Witch Project. If you put your hand to your face all of a sudden you were blinded by light, you know, that type of sensation. When you're running in the dark and lighting your way in front, everything behind you is pitch black. I started to feel a little paranoid and begin to hear things that weren't really there. Every few minutes I'd turn my head real quick to check behind me to make sure everything was clear. Every time I was fully prepared to see a ravenous pack of wild dogs nipping at my heels. Even though it was 2:30 AM, dogs would bark from all the houses near by which also added to the paranoia feeling I had. You could never be sure that something wouldn't jump out. But take away those distractions and it was a very easy run. Also during the time I was on the road, a train was passing on the tracks near the river, so that was really awesome to look down into the river valley and see the lights from the train zooming by. It got me thinking, how many moments like this will I have in my lifetime? It's all about living a better story right? I am certainly doing my best. Here is the chart from my 3rd leg (click it to see it bigger):


Sometime this week I will post information on how it went logistically, some highlights from the race experience, and pictures from the course.