Time Out

Well, a weekend of tough and fun workouts became a weekend of sitting on the couch blowing my nose. I think I'm on the mend now, but it hit me pretty hard.

Yesterday, I did manage to get back on the trainer, even though I skipped the pool workout. (I don't know how to swim if I can't breathe out my nose?) We did a 75 minute ride with 1 minute sprint intervals every 8 minutes. It felt awful and great to be working out again, all at once. Even though I had to stop occasionally for tissues and more often for coughing fits, I dragged myself through it, and managed an average pace of 13.1 mph. My top speed was about 31 mph, though I only held it for a moment.

Also, in a bit of a book review, I'm currently reading "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", by Richard Rhodes. It was a bit tough to get started, but it's absolutely fascinating, and a much better read than you'd expect for a book so heavy on physics. I'm only about halfway done, but based on what I've read so far, I highly recommend it.

Bleh.

I came down with a cold today. And then I got called back in to work. So now I'm here at 6:30, blowing my nose, and hoping I feel better before the reverse triathlon and epic swim in the works for the weekend.

Bleh.

19:55:56

Better swimmer than expected?
Worse estimator than expected?
Can't count to 40 correctly?

You make the call!

I think I got my count correct, but I lost my concentration on it somewhere around 30, so there's the possibility that I was 2 lengths short. Even so, that would add about a minute, and still put me well under my 25 minute estimate. It certainly wasn't comfortable by the end, but I think that's probably the way a time trial should feel.

Back to Basics

After this weekend's success and a 2-hour ride on the trainer Sunday, my legs have been pretty beat up. I showed up to the gym yesterday for a recovery swim, expecting a nice relaxing day, and instead getting an hour of flailing around feeling like I can't swim. It was the first swim workout in the schedule that didn't include a warmup, which is where I usually get in some drills.

Obviously, consistency is still an issue. While I know that there are good days and bad days, I don't want to risk a day that bad on race day.

So, for today's swim, 4x300 became 300 of drills, and then 3x300. I don't know if it was the drills, better concentration, or just an extra day of rest, but it was much better. I was even the fastest person in the pool for once, and I don't just mean the water aerobics crowd! (Other than one guy. But then I saw he had flippers, so he was immediately disqualified from our imaginary race in which he didn't know we were competing.)

This Saturday is supposed to be my first time trial in the pool - 1000m. However, I think we're going to be in Boston for some race, or something? So tomorrow looks like time trial day. The triathlon we're doing in early May makes you enter a time estimate for your 400m swim, and I put down 10 minutes as a rough guess. That would translate into a 25 minute time trial (would be 0:48ish half iron, 1:37ish iron), so let's mark that down as the goal for now.

E for Effort!

In college at OSU, I did some fencing. I took the classes, and fenced with the club occasionally, but I never tried out for the varsity team. I always sort of regretted that decision (back then, I might have had a shot...not with the current team!), and when I picked back up with my fencing a couple years ago, I decided that earning a fencing classification would go on my life list.

Now, the rules for earning rankings are a little complex (here, if you're interested), but to make it simple, more people + higher ranked people = more and higher classifications awarded. The classifications go from A (highest) to E (lowest), and then U (unrated) for everyone else. On Saturday, I fenced two tournaments: one for only unrated fencers, and one for D and under.

A little more background on fencing tournaments, as well. The first part of a tournament is broken down into smaller pools, generally 5-7 fencers in the tournaments I've done. In your pool, you fence each of the other entrants, first to 5 touches wins. The second part of the tournament is a single-elimination bracket, seeded from the pool results, and each bout is fenced to 15 touches.

The unrated tournament began first. To our surprise, enough fencers registered that the top four spots would be awarded a classification: D for the champion, E for the second place and both third place finishers. (There's usually no consolation bout, so third place is considered a tie between the losers of the semifinals.)

My club had three fencers entered, so our goal was to finish among the top four seeds. That way, we'd be guaranteed not to meet before the semifinals. I felt great in my pool, and it showed in the results. I won all four of my bouts, and only received four touches total against me. It wasn't quite good enough for the top seed - my teammate edged me out with only three touches against, so I took the 2 seed. We were happy to see after the pool rounds that we had indeed taken the top three seeds for the bracket.

Moving on to the elimination bouts, I was probably a little overconfident in my first match. My opponent did very well, even coming in as a low seed. She kept the bout close for the first few minutes before I pulled away. After the win, I realized I only needed to advance one more round to reach the semifinals and get my E ranking! Fortunately, I drew a fencer I had already faced, and had some strategies going in. She was much improved from the last time we matched up, but I managed to win this one as well, with a fair margin. I'd earned my E, but there was little time to celebrate, because the tougher matches were still coming.

Thanks to being edged out in the pools, I had to match up against one of my teammates in the semifinals. He is left-handed, which always gives me trouble, and despite being fairly new to fencing, he and I are fairly even. Fortunately, I jumped out to an early lead, and it was my day. On to the final! Or so I thought.

Remember how I was also fencing in the D & under tournament? At this point, I got called over to start my pool bouts for that one. Despite my best attempts, I couldn't convince them to let me fence my final first, because they were already changing their schedule for me. I decided I was going to be aggressive and end those matches quickly, for better or for worse. My first matchup, who I've faced before, made short work of me, 5-1. Due to the scheduling delays, I didn't get a break, and had to fence a second bout in a row, but I returned the favor, downing the next opponent 5-1.

My reward for those two bouts? Immediately jumping into my final bout for the first tournament, matched up against my teammate. He jumped out to an early lead, and I struggled to stay within range. Then, on what would have been a touch for him, my next challenge reared up.

In competitive foil fencing, fencers wear a mesh jersey that allows the electrical scoring system to register a touch. On one of my opponent's attacks, he hit me, but it didn't register a touch. He asked to test my equipment, and we found that it had a dead spot, which meant I had to change to new equipment. Sadly, I only own one.

I couldn't wear my teammate's that I had faced last, since he's a lefty. So my opponent in the final offered me one of his backups.

He's 13.

Now, I've never worn a corset, but I can now imagine what it would be like. I sucked in my stomach, got the zipper started, and then breathed out to get it zipped up. I couldn't take a deep breath, but somehow it held. We continued our bout, and I fought back. Down 14-13, I thought I blocked his attack and touched him, but I didn't get the call from the referee. So, I fell in the final, 15-13. However, if there's anyone I would have picked to lose to, it was the right person. He and his family showed a lot of sportsmanship by offering me equipment to be able to finish the match, and even brought me water during a break since I didn't have any time to get some before the bout.

The second tournament ended up going okay as well. I fenced fairly well, and finished somewhere in the middle of the pack, but I wasn't too concerned at that point. I got my ranking, and went home happy.

Tris and Quads

I told Meredith yesterday, "Either I'll have the strongest quads ever by race day, or my legs will fall off."

This Wednesday was the first "long" run of the training, a 90 minute run with Meredith and Andrea. For them, it's taper time for Boston, so I managed to hang with them for their 7 miles (for once :) ), and added on another bit on my own at the end. It was nice to get back out there, but I had a right quad that was on the verge of cramping during most of the run. I hydrated pretty well that day, so I'm not sure what was going on there. Afterward, we got our Wednesday night $4 burgers, and I realized I had all of 8 hours or so until a bike ride.

Thursday's ride was back in on the trainer, and honestly wasn't a great ride. After the fun of the outdoor ride, it was mentally tough to focus on pedaling in the living room again.

And after work, the fun really began with fencing practice.

But let's take a step back first. Meredith is quite the napper - she loves to grab an afternoon siesta after work, or exercise, or...well, pretty much anytime. :) I, on the other hand, usually just lay on the couch and watch TV or sit at the computer for my relaxing time. But yesterday, I don't know what happened. I set down my gym bag on the bed around 4:15...

And then I woke up at 4:55, sideways on the bed with my feet hanging over the edge. Tired much? I had to scramble to get my fencing gear together and zipped off to class. Thanks to my lateness, I got to run some extra laps before class started. We began with some shuttle runs and strength training, and here's the spot I thought my legs would fall off, or I'd just end up on the floor some other way.

For those of you who haven't fenced and want to try this exercise for yourselves:

• Place your feet a little more than shoulder width apart.
  
• Turn your back foot (left foot if you're right handed) 90°, so it's perpendicular to your other foot. Keep your weight slightly shifted to your back leg, so you feel it in your quad.
  
• Lower yourself so that your knees are bent. This is en garde position, which should look something like this:
  
  
• Take a small step forward, front foot first, then back foot.
  
• Keeping your back upright (don't lean over!), squat down so that you are sitting on your back heel, which will come off the ground.
  
• Using your quads, push yourself back up to en garde position. Don't straighten your legs!
  
• Take another small step, and repeat down the length of the gym.
  

Let's just say I was looking forward to a swim-only day today. :)

Oh, and a little math I learned today...

(Forgetting to wear bandaids on the first longish run of the season) + (Pool Swim) = Ouch x 2!

First outdoor ride!

It's about time! The weather finally cleared and warmed enough to take the bike out on the streets for the first time.

Speaking of the bike, I'm sort of tired of calling it "the bike". I think it needs a name. I'm leaning toward "Charlie Brown". He's a perpetual underdog, always gets beat by the same girl, but everyone roots for him in the end. Plus, this is an artist's rendition of my top tube as seen from the saddle:



So, Charlie and I took to the streets on Saturday for my two hour ride. First order of business? Those evil clip things that live on my pedals. I walked my bike down to the street where it's flat, and threw a leg over it. Right foot? Check. Push off. Left foot? Check. Hey, that was easy! I rode around our little loop, and came to the stop sign on the other side. Unclip right foot? Check. Stop bike? Check. Put foot on ground? Um...that ground is lower than I remember it...wobble...wobble...reach for curb and narrowly avoid the dreaded slow motion tip-over.

Assess situation...Oh yeah. Get off the saddle first before reaching for the ground. Details, details. :)

Next step - ride around the neighborhood. It amazed me how much smoother and easier this bike rides than my mountain bike. It's no wonder I couldn't keep up with Meredith and friends last time I attempted a long ride with them. I did about 4 miles around the neighborhood, and was feeling good and waving to all the cheering masses. (Pictured below, actual size)



It was time for the real roads.

Now, where we live isn't ideal for biking. On one side we have a very busy 2-lane road with constant lights and business entrances that's really not an option. The other side is a fairly lightly traveled road, with one caveat. It's barely narrow enough for two cars to pass at certain points. We don't especially even like running it, since you can get run off the road. I was nervous to ride it on my first time out, but it was pretty much the only option if I didn't want to drive somewhere. Thankfully, it was uneventful today, and I started up toward town, with one loop around a local golf course.

I started out east on one of the less-populated main roads, and headed for Abercrombie headquarters. On a Saturday, it's a nice flat deserted stretch out in the fields, other than all the half-naked models wandering around in their corrals. I used this part to test out my aero position. Not too bad...it felt comfortable. One problem:



I got to the end of that stretch of road, and paused for a moment to appreciate how quiet it was. The difference between running distance and cycling distance became apparent to me at that moment. From there, I rode another few miles before turning around, and got startled by one of these chasing me:



Fortunately, he stopped at the end of his property. I also saw some of these:



Despite their obvious viciousness, I managed to pedal past without incident, and made it home in 2:00:09. Total mileage (approximate, used MapMyRun.com): 28.55 miles. So, about 14.25 mph, and I wasn't stopping my watch for intersections or riding especially hard. Not too bad for a first try, I suppose.

Oh, if you want to see a video of my course, this pretty much sums it up (wrong state, but still...):

Exhausted

That was the slowest swim ever.

Last night's intervals were wet, but good. I decided to shoot for 600m in my 3 minutes of tempo, which is about an 8 minute pace. Not blazing fast, but...well, that's where I am in my running right now. After the first interval, which was right at 600m, I managed to get somewhere around 650 for the rest, which is about a 7:25 pace. For the last one, I tried to dig deep and get to 700 in the 3 minutes, but I missed it by about 8 seconds. Not sure if the chicken got me, or maybe I was just out of gas after the morning swim-tervals.

So, this morning was a 1500 continuous swim. I wasn't even...um...hausted...to begin with, so it was a fight to complete it. The first 30 lengths seemed like they'd never end (but they did), and by the finish I felt like I was purely kicking from my knees and splashing my arms down hard.

Props to the gym for the "Top Gun" soundtrack that was playing today. Other than "Take My Breath Away". That's not what you want to hear when you're struggling in the pool. :)

Dun dun dun!

Registered for the Muncie Endurathon today.

No turning back now!

My Parents Would Be So Proud

If they weren't halfway across the world right now! They're on a cruise down around the southern end of South America. Really sounds like a cool trip, but 50s and rain isn't so bad, right? Right?

This week, Meredith and I went to the grocery store. The grocery is not an every week occurrence for us, since we procrastinate on it all the time. But that leads to us eating out all the time, which makes for sad wallets, and sad waists. We loaded up on fresh things this trip (what?!), and things that are actually good fuel for our training. Apples, bananas, yogurt, grapes...things that haven't graced our fridge for quite some time. We really want to make a concerted effort this month to eat well, and save the restaurant cash for better things, like triathlon registration. :)

And yesterday, I changed the brake pads on Meredith's Element. If there's one thing I learned growing up, it was how to change brake pads on a Honda. Apparently, it's not quickly forgotten, because I knocked out the whole thing in an hour, even though my socket wrench decided to play hide and seek with me. (It won.)

So, Mom and Dad, this week, I ate healthy, and I changed my own brake pads. Thanks!

Today is interval day, both in the pool and on the track. Got the swim out of the way this morning. I'm pretty sure my 20x75 "sprints" in the pool, translated to land, would be indistinguishable from a normal walk...perhaps a light jog if I was lucky. This afternoon will be a 75 minute interval run, probably in the rain. Fun!

Not. A. Morning. Person.

Last night, Meredith and I got to attend the OSU-Dayton game and send off the Buckeyes to the semis of the NIT. It was the third game in a row we managed to sit in the first three rows, thanks to some timely ticket purchasing, and once again the team didn't disappoint. It was a 9:00 tip-off, though, and by the time traffic cleared out and we got home, it was a fairly late bedtime.

So, 6 AM came early today (or 6:15, in Meredith's case...). I got some granola, laid on the couch to watch the news, and generally was pokey in getting ready for my 60 minute run. When Meredith left, I got down to the treadmill to finish off The Empire Strikes Back and get my run on. It didn't feel great, which I attributed to the late night and long swim yesterday. So, I cut it down to a walk for a bit after each set of strides to let my feet and legs recover before kicking it into gear again. Not my best run, but I got it in, and I already know I can run the needed distance for these races.

I got upstairs to take a shower, and went to take my shoes off. Huh. Not my running shoes. Go figure, the brand-new-worn-three-times $30 knockaround shoes I just bought the other day didn't feel good during a run.

Yeah, not so much a morning person.

Just keep swimming...

Last night, Meredith and I headed down to the gym for a 30 minute recovery swim. After a little drilling, I started in on some light swimming, mixed in with a little bit of ill-advised racing when we happened to be next to each other. :) I could keep up with her for a bit, but I knew that wasn't the best way to do a recovery swim. Also, I knew I'd be doing plenty this morning.

Today's swim was the longest in the training plan to date: 200 warmup, 2000 main continuous, and 200 cooldown. I didn't count laps yesterday, and afterwards realized I had gone close to 800m without a major break. If that was possible, why not 1000? Why not 2000?

And I did it. Continuous. I just got in a rhythm today. Yes, I'm still over-rotating to breathe. Yes, my kick is ugly at times. But I finished 2000 meters without stopping. That's longer than the swim in Muncie. It took me 51 minutes, which some might call a bit slow. I call it under the cutoff pace for IM Austria, with 15 months still left to improve.

Oh, and I forgot to add this initially...I made it to the door of the gym today, looked down, and instead of my water bottle, I had grabbed my tupperware container of apple crisp. It might not be as refreshing, but it certainly would have entertained the other folks in the pool to see me stuffing handfuls of apple crisp in my mouth between laps. :)

The Hills

Sorry Meredith, it's not about the show (or the program).

This week is the start of month two in my training plan for Muncie. Now that a base has been established, I get to start doing some more intense sessions. Today was the first "hill" ride, though it was actually inside on the trainer.

Now, I've only been on the new bike a couple times, but it's seriously uncomfortable in the seat area. I hope that's something that goes away as you get used to it, because I'm not sure I could take it for eight hours of riding. I was actually looking forward to the hill intervals today, because the added resistance meant taking pressure off the seat.

Any bikers out there that can offer me hope for what I've got, or should I be looking at a different seat?

A Contest, Eh?

This weekend, Meredith and I stopped by McDonalds for breakfast before her audition to sing the national anthem at our local minor league baseball team. Pretty normal, uneventful meal, but we sat right by the poster for their current "Disney Princess and Pirate" happy meal promotion.

On the poster, it had all the fine print. Mostly the standard stuff, describing what happens when you find the winning piece in your happy meal. But then we saw this line:

"To win, a Canadian must answer a skill-testing question correctly."

This obviously raises many questions. Would we get to choose our own Canadian? Is one assigned to us? What kind of skill-testing question requires a Canadian in the first place? Our guess was something about hockey.

*click*

Training is so strange sometimes.

Two days after my disaster of a swim, something clicked, and today's swim (albeit shorter) was great. I did the last 400 in one stretch, and felt like I could have kept going. My concentration today was on my front arm position and my head position. By not ducking my head, I felt like air was more readily available when I needed it. I also kept my front arm at a shallower angle, which seemed to keep me from submarining after a breath.

I was even relaxed enough to breathe bilaterally today, though my left side is still almost a 90° body rotation.

In other news, the 24/7 Elton John song rotation in the pool area during the morning seems to be no more; today I heard Colbie Caillat and Sara Bareilles. For the first couple weeks of training, literally every song was Elton John. I'll probably be humming "Bennie and the Jets" all through the swim at Muncie.

The Big One

And out of the ashes again comes the blog. :)

As you probably already know if you read Meredith's blog, we're training for Ironman Austria in 2009.

Along the way is the first big goal, the Muncie Endurathon this July. It's a half-Ironman distance: 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and 13.1 mile run. For now, that distance seems overwhelming enough. Thoughts about the full race can wait till after that one. :)

I'm about 3 weeks into my training. Running is certainly the easiest right now, which is little surprise considering it's the only one I've really done over the last few years. We just got our bikes last week, so hopefully we can get outside on them once Downpour '08 finishes up.

Today was a swim, 1650 meters in all. The swim is what scares me the most about the triathlon. Now, I can already "swim". The challenge is turning it into something that I can do for 1.2 miles, and eventually 2.4. Right now my biggest problem is breathing. Just to test myself today, I tried to swim 25m without breathing. No problem. And yet, I always feel like I'm struggling for breath when I breathe every 4 (or 3, or 2) strokes. Definitely something that needs to go away by July.

2007 Columbus Marathon

Well, it's not the most exciting race to recap, but I'll give the overview.

My Mom came down for the race, which was much appreciated. Meredith's parents picked us up a little over an hour before the start, and we all headed downtown together. While last year in Chicago, we were shivering and wearing gloves, long sleeves, and trash bags to keep in the heat, this year a long sleeve pullover was plenty to stay warm before the race. After we met up with our friends downtown, we all walked over to the start line together. In our short sleeves and shorts. Not feeling cold at all. While that's nice for any normal day, it's not a good start to a marathon.

My plan was to run with the four hour pace group for the entire race, and try to break that mark at the end. I fell a little behind during mile 1, just due to the general mayhem with different paces at the start of the race. Also, while there were about 3300 people running the marathon, another 6000+ were there running the half marathon, which ran the same roads for the majority of its course, and started at the same time.

I picked up the pace (maybe a little too much, around an 8:40 mile) during mile 2, and caught the pace group. For the next 3 miles or so, I ran with them pretty comfortably. After that, though, I knew something wasn't right. My stomach began to feel...not so good, and my legs felt numb, like I had already run 20 miles. Seven miles into a marathon, that's not a good feeling to have. I was able to still hang with the pace leader, but it felt like I was expending far too much energy to do it.

Mile 10 took us back through downtown, and past our moms' cheering section, which was a nice pick-up. After that, we did about a three mile loop down through German Village, which has some nice crowd support, and then began the long climb up High Street. I crossed the halfway point at 2:00:52, almost exactly on pace, but extremely tired and feeling dehydrated. While we climbed up High Street for the next four miles, I would look up, and each time, the pace group was gaining on me more and more. That was the most discouraging part of the race, and the part where I seriously considered just turning around and walking back.

But, I decided that I'd rather have a slow time than waste all my training just to quit, so I kept going. By mile 16, my body was already exhausted, and I had to start walking some significant stretches. That would become a theme, as I never ran another complete mile. I started getting cramps in my stomach, and at one point in my hamstring that forced me off the side of the road. Thank goodness it never completely balled up, but it felt like it was about to do so. The second half of the race is also almost completely in the sun, and I certainly wasn't the only one suffering - at some points, there were more people in my view walking than running.

Rather than beat myself up about it, I tried to just enjoy the rest of the race as much as I could. On this day, I realized that it wasn't about not training hard enough, or not preparing well. I hydrated well, other than missing one early water stop due to crowds. I took my gel packs at the appropriate times. I think my body just didn't react well to the heat, and that there's not much I could have done about it.

I ended up with a 4:39, which was disappointing given the amount of training I did, but is still my second best time. Judgment on when/whether another marathon will happen is reserved until my body recovers from this one.

NBHCMTS 20 Miler

Quite the acronym, no?

Anyhow, this 20 miler was the last tune-up before tapering down to the Columbus marathon in a few weeks. It's mostly an out-and-back race, with a few hilly miles more on the out.

I was fortunate enough to strike up a conversation with a couple other guys around mile 5, and we ran together until around mile 13, when I turned up the speed a little bit. My goal was to be somewhere between a 9:30 and 10:00 pace, so as not to burn myself out too much before the real goal in three weeks.

After New Hampshire, the hill toward the end of the race didn't seem nearly so steep this year, and I cruised across the finish line at 3:15:39, a 9:46 pace. I was pretty happy that I was able to pace myself well on a long race, and never walked. Last year, I had run a 3:11, which surprised me when I looked back today. For only a four minute difference, I ran much more in control and comfortably this year, and I wasn't even trying to run my fastest. Makes me think the training is going pretty well...or at least I will convince myself that's what it means. :)

Now it's time to taper down the miles and get ready for the big finish to fall training!

Reach the Beach 2007

The road can be awfully lonely when you're all by yourself in the rain at 3:30 AM. But we'll get to that later.

We took off early Thursday morning for New Hampshire, meeting in Portsmouth to begin our trek up to the mountains. Checking into our hotel early in the afternoon, our team got a chance to drive out to the top of Mt. Washington, which was a spectacular (if sometimes a bit nerve-wracking) journey. After returning, we attended the pasta dinner at Cannon Mountain, the starting point of the race. Kudos to the event for what I thought was quite a nice meal.

The butterflies began fluttering a bit in my stomach the next morning, as the impending race became more real. While the first teams left the start line at 7:00 AM, we were expected to be one of the faster teams, and thus weren't scheduled to leave until 2:30 PM. It was a long morning of sitting around, but finally we set off around noon for Cannon Mountain. Following a quick lunch at the ski resort there, we watched our first runner set off on the beginning of our long journey to the coast.

Meredith ran the second leg of the race, which was a fairly long leg. (A theme for her this year) She did a great job with it. I was leg five, so I had to wait a couple more hours as our team ran pretty much over the top of a 1500 foot peak. My first leg took us down the final few miles of the mountain, and flattened out at the base.

My adrenaline was rushing pretty hard as I took the handoff and began down the steep hill. It was hard to keep my legs in check on the decline, so I let them run. Our vans soon went by, offering encouragement. Unfortunately, we were the last team on the course at this point, so I was running pretty much by myself.

Fifteen minutes into the run, I passed our vans and grabbed some water. They informed me that I had run about two miles. I winced, as that meant I was doing 7:30 miles, a pace I certainly couldn't maintain. Sure enough, the pace caught up to me by the end, and I finished the 4.8 miles in an 8:14 pace, still much better than expected.

We followed our sixth runner to the end of his leg, then handed off to the runners in the other van so we could get some much needed nourishment at Subway. Proceeding to the next transition area, we parked and some of us caught a catnap while waiting. This was about the area that we began to realize we were being recognized as "That team 333 that's still out there". We were gaining time on a lot of teams, but we had started so late that we weren't catching anyone.

Our van's second string of legs began late Friday evening. By the time it rolled around to me again, it was almost 3:00 AM, and had started to rain heavily. Fortunately for me, the rain tailed off to a steady drizzle by the time I took the handoff.

My 7.4 mile course took me up out of the town of Meredith, NH. Climbing about 400 feet in the first couple miles, I would descend almost back to my starting elevation, then climb it again before descending to the finish. Though it wasn't an easy run, I found myself able to keep the pace somewhere under a 9:00 pace, even on the hills. With two miles left in the run, my van went ahead to the transition area to prepare the next runner.

As I descended a long hill, I saw a traffic light ahead that I thought I recognized from the course instructions. Looking for course markers, I saw one pointing straight ahead past the intersection. The light turned at precisely the right time, and I coasted through, just a few minutes before my estimated arrival time on my watch. However, as I continued on, I started to get confused. There was one fairly well lit parking lot to the right, but no markers there. I kept going for 15-20 minutes, getting more nervous as I went. I knew something was awry, but I didn't know whether to turn back and risk not reaching the end, or continue on and risk wasting more time if I was wrong.

After thinking briefly about knocking on the nearby sheriff's office, I finally found another team's van to flag down. They informed me that I had missed my turn, nearly two miles back.

With some resignation, I thanked them, and began moving as fast as I could back up the hill I had just descended. My team van had been out searching for me, and eventually found me coming back up the hill. I made it back to the transition area, and handed off to our next runner. I had cost us about 40 minutes, but everyone seemed to just be happy that I was safe. In all the confusion, I never stopped my watch, so I don't know a time or even a distance for that leg. We picked up our sixth runner after his leg and headed to the next van exchange, where we all managed to get at least a little sleep.

The morning brought somewhat better weather, though it was chilly and still a little wet. It also brought the news that we had actually begun to catch some teams during the night, which brightened the mood as well. The race staff seemed impressed that we were making up that much time, and we heard multiple surprised comments when people heard that team 333 was no longer the last one on the course.

My third and final leg of the race was theoretically my easiest. It was 4.7 miles of rolling terrain, but no hills as steep as either of my other legs. I also made sure to memorize the road names on this leg so I wasn't dependent on seeing the arrows marking the course. Even the rolling hills were a challenge after the previous day, but I managed to keep my legs moving in some semblance of a run throughout the leg. I arrived at the school marking the next handoff having run an 8:16 pace.

However, my van wasn't there. Our second van was present, but not my van carrying our next runner! In confusion, the second van called my cell phone, and informed my van that they were in the wrong place. One of the signs had turned, and they had gone down the next leg of the course instead. While I was waiting, two more runners arrived without their vans as well.

About ten minutes passed, and my van showed up to drop off our next runner. Handing off the bracelet, I had finished my portion of the course. Happily, I changed into some dry clothes. I never did see another runner on the course in any of my legs, which was a little disappointing, but also somewhat inevitable given our starting time.

As the final legs wound down, our team passed more runners, though we still ended up being one of the last teams to the beach. When our last runner came into sight, we all got to run (or hobble) across the finish line together, which was really nice. Afterward, we got together for a celebratory pizza dinner before flying back the next morning.

All in all, I had a really good time at the race. Without the course mistakes, I think I would have beaten my goal times significantly on all my legs. Perhaps next year I'll get the opportunity to best them again!

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

Every year, Meredith runs a relay race in New Hampshire called Reach the Beach. It's a 24+ hour race, which covers most of the length of the state. Unfortunately, one of their runners went down with an injury this week, and they were scrambling to find a replacement. That's where I come in.

If things go as planned, I'll be running three legs of the race: 4.8, 7.4, and 4.7 miles. I'm not sure what time of day (or night) they'll be.

Should be interesting...