Wow... what can I say. I guess a lot 'cause this is not a short post. The 2009 Blue Ridge Relay was quite the experience. 211.2 miles, 36 legs, 12 runners on our team, 106 teams in the relay. Here are my thoughts 3 days after we finished... I'm sure there will be more to come.
Don't ask me to describe the relay legs... can't be done. There is no way to adequately explain what running 6.5 miles up a hill with 1400 ft. of elevation gain is like... or to run through the night on a gravel road in the mountains with an overcast sky(i.e. no moonlight), no street lights and the fog so thick that you can't see the edges of the road. Yes, there were several easy legs; 2.4 miles downhill in the middle of the night and no traffic, where you could really fly if you had it in you. But those were few and far between.
You learn a lot about people when you run an event like this. Mainly you learn whether you're good at recruiting the right people. I would have to say that I'm a genius in judging character after what I witnessed this weekend.
With 12 runners, the logistics of operating a race like this are significant. We took the recommended approach of having 2 support vans with 6 runners in each. Van #1 consisted of Jonathan Everett, Steve Perdue, Tony Duarte, Keith King, Dennis Parent and Byron Estrada. Van #2 consisted of Reuben Hawks, Sarju Patel, Wayne Ingram, Bruce Jones, John Snyder and Matt Thomas.
Exchange zones existed at the end/beginning of each leg. Runners would be picked up and dropped off as they finished/started their assigned legs. A bracelet would be passed between runners at each exchange zone. At the end of legs 6, 12, 18, 24 and 30, the vans would transition from active to dormant and dormant to active. These exchange zones were called transition zones.
The crew in van #1 started us off at Grayson Highlands State Park, VA. Legs 1-6 varied from a downhill 4 mile run to a 5.2 miler that looked like a double-humped camel back with a 450 ft. climb right before the end... only one word can describe it... brutal. Every runner on the road when our team came through was walking up this hill... every runner... it was that steep. Legs 7-12 varied from a flat 5.2 miler to a 9.1 miler that included a 4 mile, 600 ft. climb on the Blue Ridge Parkway. At the end of leg 12 everyone was starting to have a better appreciation for what we had signed up to accomplish. The runners in van #1 had already adjusted to the dynamics of the environment and had been able to get some sleep lying on the grassy medians of a Tanger Outlet Mall parking lot at transition zone #2. This is also where I started seeing what kind of character our team members have.
Starting off leg 13, Jonathan Everett ran south on busy US highway 221 for 7.1 miles... at dusk... where the shoulder on the road is non-existent and trucks and cars are going by at highway speeds. Either a lot of prayers were said on his behalf, he has nerves of steel, or both, but he did an incredible job. Then on leg 14, Steve Perdue took over... Steve and I went to jr. high and high school together... he's 51. Steve ran a 10 mile leg that climbed 750 ft. up to Grandfather Mountain... and he did it running a 7:18 pace. Unbelievable!Now, how would you feel if you had to run after Steve? Well, Tony handled leg 15 like a champion. Tony is 59 and had been telling me for months that he was going to run a 10-minute mile pace no matter what. So what does he do... he runs his 2.4 mile leg at an 8:20 pace. By this time the guys in van #1 are stoked. Steve just burned up the road for 10 miles and Tony follows suit and cuts a minute forty off of his pace to keep it going. Keep in mind that when Jonathan started, it was dusk. By now it is night time and very dark. For leg 16, Keith had his easiest leg of the race... just a 3.3 mile run with a 200 ft. climb in the middle of the leg. He cranked out a 10-min. mile pace and turned the reins over to Dennis. Dennis ran leg 17, a moderate 4.9 mile leg that had a 1 mile, 400 ft. climb 3.5 miles into the run. Dennis cranked out a 9:30 pace on this leg. Closing out this section of the course was Byron. He had gotten surprised by the horrible climb at the end of leg 6 and was probably wondering by now why he ever got involved with our running group. But Byron, being a former Marine, was up to the task. A lot of people think running downhill is easy... and in some cases it is. But when the downhill is 5.9 miles long and it drops 1100 ft., it's not so easy. Your quads and knees will hate you on the way down and if you haven't trained running down steep hills, it can take all of your effort to just not fall down and slide on the road. Byron gets leg 18 done in 1:00 without injury.
Now I'm going to take a break from the action and let you in on some behind the scenes information that isn't very pleasant. Thursday night the team camped at Grayson Highlands State Park in Virginia. It rained during the night and cooled off into the upper 40's. I thought, if this temperature would hold out, then we would have a great running weekend. Friday morning, on the way to transition zone #1, van #2 stopped at a Bojangles for breakfast and everyone ate. We then got to transition zone #1 and waited for van #1 and Byron. The cloud cover from Thursday night had burned off and by the time Byron completed leg 6, it was starting to get pretty hot. Reuben took over from Byron followed by Sarju. These guys are young, mid-to-upper 20's... and I'm 50. Those two guys were flying on their legs. I followed Sarju and went out as if the adrenaline was pushing me down the road. It did, for about 2.5 miles. I couldn't handle the heat and the pace and flamed out halfway through the leg. Bruce, also 50, followed me and scorched his leg, but that turned out to be the beginning of a bad weekend for Bruce. It turns out that when he exerts himself like that in the heat, it plays havoc on his stomach. He was sick for the remainder of the weekend. For most people that would have meant taking it easy and cruising through their legs. But not Bruce Jones... he flew on every leg he had, including his 3rd one which was in the heat of the day on Saturday. He truly sacrificed himself for the team!
Following Bruce was John Snyder. John and I met in 1993 and worked for the same company in Warner Robins, GA. He is quick to point out that we're still friends because we never really worked together on the same project. I'm not sure after this weekend that John will speak to me again. He ran leg 11, a 6.05 mile, hard leg that steadily climbed 250 ft. over a 4 mile range, flattened out a bit and then dropped 150 ft. in the last mile. The bad part though was that it was almost all on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Actually two of his three legs were on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Having to watch out for traffic going 55+ mph the whole time you're running will wear you out mentally and physically. John did fine though, running 54:56, a 9:05 pace.
Now back to the unpleasantries... Matt and I have been running together now for 3 years. He is 17-18 years younger than me and I basically spend my time trying to catch him. Fortunately Bruce had started running with us, so that provided Matt a solid training partner. Matt ran leg 12, a 9.1 mile hill climb on the Blue Ridge Parkway. As both vans are hanging out at transition zone #2, here comes Matt, about 10 minutes earlier than we expected. He has run this 9.1 mile leg, 600 ft. climb in 73 minutes... an 8:01 pace. After Jonathan takes off for his leg and Matt cools down, he starts searching... Matt is having a stomach attack from Bojangles egg and cheese biscuits. About 15 minutes later we realize that he has joined Bruce as a sick casualty for the remainder of the weekend.
Now back to the action... van #1 has just completed their 2nd leg and it is around 12:30 a.m.... You can imagine how pumped we all were by now. Reuben comes out on leg 19 and runs a 7:44 pace for 4.3 miles. Then Sarju cranks out a 7:12 pace for 7.8 miles on leg 20. After tanking my first leg, I wasn't about to let my team down. Fortunately for me it was 2:00 a.m. and 55 degrees, a 2.4 mile downhill leg. I went out and ran my first mile in 7:28, mile 2 in 9:12 after taking a couple of short walk breaks and then wrapped up the leg at a 5:45 pace. Yes, my GPS doesn't lie. Reuben was waiting for me at the last turn and he didn't believe I had run past him that fast. Fortunately it was only 0.4 mile and I was able to hold on to the exchange zone and pass off to Bruce.
The cooler night time weather was also good for Bruce. Leg 22 was 6.0 miles long with a 100 ft. climb in the first mile and a 250 ft. climb in the last mile. He cranked out an 8:33 pace... sweet! John had already run a very hard leg 11, now he was out on leg 23... and now we were scared for John. The leg went down into a valley, on a gravel road. No lights, fogged in, gray dirt and gravel road. John couldn't see the edges of the road, so he couldn't see well enough to find his way. Firemen at the next exchange zone said they wouldn't go on that road at night without a firearm, and here was John trying to find his way through the fog. The amazing thing was that John ran a 9:04 pace for the 5.7 mile leg.
Leg 24 for Matt was a break sandwiched between his two hard legs. 3.2 miles with a steep 200 ft. climb in the first half mile and then downhill to the end. This is where Matt flew and ran a 7:08 pace.
At this point we are through 24 legs and it is 5:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. We had until 6:00 p.m. to finish the race or be removed from the course. While van #2 was headed to transition zone 5, exchange zone 30, and a pancake breakfast at a small Baptist church in Pensacola, NC, van #1 was on the course... looking out for Jonathan. Leg 25 was described by Steve as follows
Steve followed up with his 3rd "hard" leg, a 6.9 mile run with the first 4 miles being a steep downhill. Once again he cranked out an impressive 8:17 pace. Tony, would step it up again and run his 3rd leg at a 9:31 pace, 5.2 miles. Keith and Dennis quickly followed suit, Keith running a 7.4 mile up hill leg in 1:13 and Dennis a 7.5 mile leg in 1:14. These were very hard back-to-back legs, especially for their 3rd leg of the race and began just as the heat started up again.
By this time, several of us in van #2 didn't think it was possible for us to finish on time. We had called our wives and told them that they may not want to drive to Asheville and see us finish since we didn't think we were going to be allowed to finish the race. We had an ETA for Byron at zone 30 of 11:43. He pulled in at 11:40 and Reuben was off on the leg I had specifically selected for him.
All but one of the leg assignments were made based on their published level of difficulty and the mileage. Each of the runners were rated based on the training reports I was getting from them and past performance in other events. The one exception was Reuben. Leg 31 was rated mountain goat hard. I wanted Reuben on this leg even though the total mileage for this position in the running sequence was 15.2 miles. You can lose a lot of time on a hill like this; 6.5 miles, 1400 ft climb. If you live in South Carolina, think running up to Caesars Head State Park. Reuben took off on leg 31 and started passing runners before he got to the climb. Both vans actually drove this leg just because we all needed to see for ourselves how bad it really was. It was bad...
When Reuben got to the top, he was mad. The elevation profile suggested that there was a very steep climb at the end of the leg... there wasn't. The slope didn't change hardly at all and Reuben had held off on his pace to make sure he would finish okay. He ends up running this leg in 61 minutes for a 9:23 pace.
Sarju Patel is a software engineer working at Robins AFB in Warner Robins, GA. He and John know each other from work and have trained together for a couple of years. The two of them and Steve had been going to Sprewell Bluff State Park and running hills together for a couple of months just preparing for the relay. Both John and Steve told me that Sarju was the man for the longest downhill run of the race. Unfortunately, the elevation profile was wrong and the downhill section of leg 32 was only 4.9 miles, an 1800 ft drop. Fortunately, the remaining 4.5 miles was flat and Sarju is strong. Sarju ran this leg, his 3rd one of the weekend, in 72 minutes; that's a 7:39 pace.
Now for my last leg, a 5.2 mile, very hard rated leg. One word for the first 3.5 miles of this leg... brutal. In 3.5 miles, an 800 ft. climb. I ran the first mile in 9:49 and realized that I would burn out long before I got to the top. Jonathan Everett had recommended on Friday night that I power walk up the steepest part of the climb. So I clicked off mile 2 in 13:11 and mile 3 in 17:47. Mile 4 was in 16:49, half of it up the steepest part of the climb and the second half as I started downhill. I could see Reuben way ahead and waiting for me a quarter-mile from the finish, so I kicked it the last mile and finished out the leg in a 6:35 pace. At the last exchange zone I found out that leg was nicknamed the trail of tears. I certainly can appreciate that now.
I mentioned earlier that Bruce ran his last leg in the heat of the day on Saturday. It was blazing hot when I finished my leg and there was Bruce, after being sick for 24+ hours and not having eaten anything of substance, waiting for me to come in. He once again put in a phenomenal performance running the 4.4 miles of leg 34 in 39:00 flat; an 8:52 pace. Outstanding!
I felt bad for John as he prepared for leg 35. It was hot, very hot. Bruce was out on the road and John was getting ready to run on the Blue Ridge Parkway again. Leg 35, a 4.2 mile distance, had a 2.5 mile lead in to the Blue Ridge Parkway. The first 2.0 miles was a 700 ft. climb... that is a 6.6% grade... very steep. Once he climbed the hill he had to run 1.7 miles on the parkway where he had to stay mentally engaged because of the traffic. John finished but was mad at himself. He put in a gutsy performance running it in 43:31.
At exchange zone 35, Matt was psyching himself up for the last leg. I had figured our ETA to the finish line was 5:35 p.m., giving us a 25 minute margin. We were set, but we found out at the last zone that the finish had been extended to 6:30... piece of cake. One of the guys in van #1 told me the following
Here we were now with approximately 55 minutes of margin and one of our best runners bringing it home.
Our wives had decided they were coming no matter what. When van #2 got there, all of the guys from van #1 had showered and eaten. We had a big crowd. We debated very briefly about how far out to go out on the course and meet Matt for the run into the finish line. Dennis and Bruce won the debate... we ran about 15 yards. When I saw Matt coming into view I could see him wiping the tears from his eyes. He had already told me he was going to cry at the finish line. Something about running over a period of 33 hours with very little sleep in extreme terrain will do that to even the most solemn person. So here we are, at the finish line in 33:10:20, finishing 84th out of 106 teams.
Our goals for this event were to
Fortunately we were able to accomplish both of these. There are a lot of lessons learned from running this event that I've asked the guys to compile. We'll get those published soon.
This is written from a van #2 perspective. I'll have to get the guys from van #1 to share their stories so that I can post those as well.
Thanks, Wayne
