So why exactly am I standing outside in the dark at 6am on a cold Sunday morning in December with 50 other people? It’s the pre-race meeting and “pep rally” for the Squannacook River Runners just prior to this year’s Mill Cities Relay. I’m severely undercaffeinated. It makes it more fun to try and recognize people who are bundled up beyond recognition. Our club had eleven teams of five runners each. Somehow my teammates and I are able to find each other and hop into a minivan. To make that a bit more of a challenge, the teams were reshuffled late yesterday.
Since I am neither driving nor the team captain, I didn’t think it was important to know details such as where the race actually starts. That changed the moment I saw our fearless leader attempting to both drive and operate a Garmin at the same time. Suddenly I’m the navigator trying to give directions to… um… that green circle on the way zoomed out printout of the city map.
Actually it was pretty easy to find. At this hour in the morning, most of the traffic in that area was people heading to the race, so you just follow a car with a 26.2 sticker on the back. There were many to choose from. Interesting side note: Of the 5 people on our team, I’m the only one who hasn’t run a marathon. Yet.
The race starts at 8am, and also around that time everybody who isn’t running the first leg is hopping back into their cars and heading to the first exchange point. This leads to a bit of gridlock between runners on foot and runners in cars. Plan for a bit of delay if possible. Worst case scenario is that a runner is faster than expected while the drive takes longer than expected.
Luckily that didn’t quite happen to us. We showed up at the exchange point for the start of my leg with about 15 minutes to spare. I had just downed a GU and was about 50 feet into a slow warm-up jog when I hear my name being shouted frantically behind me. I turn around and see Frank (who has our team ”baton”) go past. Turns out we miscalculated his estimated arrival time, and he was running a very fast leg to boot. So much for a warm-up, let’s start by doing a full out sprint trying to catch up with Frank as he does his finishing surge to the handoff point.
It’s slightly downhill at the start. According to my watch, I’m running the first quarter mile or so at a sub seven minute pace. This can’t last. So I back off to what would still be a personal record smashing pace for me of about an 8-minute mile. A few people start running past me. They’re flying. Nobody has ever passed me so decisively in a race before. I check my watch. Yep, faster than I’ve ever gone before. Hmmm…
This shows the two key differences between a relay and a normal race. First, unless you are running the first leg, you’re not quite sure exactly when your leg will start. Second, which also does not apply to the first leg, you can be way behind slower runners and way ahead of faster runners.
Back to the race. My stomach is telling me it doesn’t like sprinting immediately after having a packet of GU. My legs are telling me they don’t like sprinting the day after doing a long run. So I backed off to something that was barely a personal record pace for me. I’m still running faster than I ever have in a race. So why is everybody passing me?
What always amazes me is that no matter how exhausted I am, when the finish line (or handoff point) is in sight, the body finds a way to go a little faster. I finished my leg averaging my fastest race pace ever at the end of my longest week of running ever. Adrenaline is a wonderful thing.
And this is where I’ll end the story. Everybody on the team beat their estimated pace for the day, and we finished twenty seven miles in a total of three and a half hours. That won’t win any prizes, but it was solidly in the middle of the pack, and a really adventuresome way to spend a Sunday morning.
