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RTB: Second Leg

September 17, 2011 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
After two hours sleep and short van ride, I set off from an elementary school in central Maine at 4:30am on an epic relay leg. John told me he'd caught a dozen or so people on his 3-mile leg, so I knew the hunting was good, but I didn't realize how good until I got out there. The night was dark, which made the long line of blinking red lights going up the hillside feel all the more secretive and enticing. I chased down 51 people and only got passed once, kept up a steady clip of 6:24, and never let doubt overtake me. The vertical gain was about 900 feet, but I wasn't scared having run bigger mountains at Williams. Fortunately, the uphill was broken but by a number of flats and dips, so my calves never go overly sore. What really got to me was the length of the thing. 9 miles is a damn long time to keep up a race pace for, especially when you ran another race just 8 hours earlier. Was really glad to reach the finish and felt like curling up in a little ball and not moving for hours afterwards. Short sleeves and running shorts may not have been the ideal choice for temperatures in the low 30s.