Last weekend I was able to have one of the best runs of my life. I ran two 10 km races and a 5 km race all within 20 hours. Twelve of us signed up to run the Reach the Beach relay race, which runs from the White Mountains in New Hampshire to Hampton Beach. 209 miles total, with everyone running 3 legs of this 24 hour endurance race! We started on Friday afternoon at 3:30 pm and ended a little before 6pm on Saturday! What a strange feeling it was. I was the eleventh runner so I was really anxious to run for over 7 hours while I drove and waited to run my first leg. It began at 11:30 pm and I ran harder than I ever have and recorded my best 10 km time of 46:16 min by my watch. That is just a little under 7:30 min/mile! Really a fantastic pace for myself. Then I felt sick and tried to sleep for two hours before our van had to move on again. At 6:30 am I was running again and this time completed a 6.3 mile course in 48:26, which is just a little slower than the previous times... still not bad for going on 24 hours without having slept more than 2 hours! Everyone else was running so well I felt pressure to bust out as fast as possible. When my final run at about 4:00 rolled around, I was primed to run all out. it was only 3.1 miles so I knew I could just waste myself. I got the wrist bracelet (like the baton) and ran as hard as I could. 8 minutes later I heard honking from our van. I figured they were cheering my amazing pace onward. Every time there is an exchange the van passes the runners (usually about 12 minutes after they begin) and they go the next stop to exchange runners or sometimes stop at the half way point to cheer them on. This time though my team was trying to tell me I had gone the wrong way! I had missed the turn while exchanging the wrist bracelet. It was an honest mistake. Immediately after the exchange you had to cross the street and take a right. I was so excited to bust out the 3.1 miles I just ducked my head down and started to pump my legs into action as I tried to find a nice rhythm. I turned around and began running back. All told I think I lost about 1.5 miles of ground, but I ran really hard and passed a few people on the way back. I felt really bad, but I ran what felt like a really fast pace. Either way everyone had a great time, and we were all exhausted. Will I do it again next year? Honestly, I hope we don't live here next year! By that I mean I really hope I graduate in the next few months. Enjoy the pictures.
3 comments:
That sounds so fun. It sounds like you guys were really running hard. Did you guys do well? (besides the lost 1.5 miles?)
We did pretty well. We finished 27th overall 7th in our division total time of 25:41:06 average of 7:22 pace. You can see results here http://www.rtbrelay.com/2008results.html We were team 270.
Dude, that sounds like a lot of fun. I hope that you guys can graduate, and still live here next year. What? miracles happen, right?
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