BCR LV Marathon Relay

This morning was the marathon relay with the Breakfast Club Runners.  We had three women and two guys in the mixed division.  We were the group's fast team and we lived up to it.  We took second place in our group with a time of 3:08.

Things didn't start out great for me.  We met incredibly early, at 5:30 AM.  I knew I wouldn't get much sleep because of that.  I tried getting five hours, but wound up only sleeping one.  Once it got late and I was still up, I stressed out and made it even harder to sleep.

I was also worried about bathroom breaks.  I had to take one really bad as we got to the start at Cedar Crest Hospital.  We took a van and dropped off and picked up teammates.  I ran the 4th of 5 legs.  One of the girls ran the first leg and our fast guy ran the second leg.

I thought we might have a lot of time waiting around for our runners to finish, but by the time we drove to each stop, our runner ended up nearly being there.  Of course we were fast after the first two legs and our third leg was good too.

My run started at Freemansburg and ended at Riverview Park in Easton.  It was almost all flat path.  It started as gravel and eventually was paved.  It was an easy 5.8 mile leg though.

Unfortunately, my Garmin stopped working early in the morning.  I'm not sure what is wrong with it.  I had to run on feel, which luckily I've become good at.

I started off slow.  The sleepiness and tight legs caused me to sputter for the first mile.  Eventually, I hit my groove though.  The weather was nice and cool, so it was perfect conditions.  I thought I'd end up passing a lot of people that were dieing, but actually I got passed a lot.  One of the few guys that I did pass was walking and he tried to run then and stick with me, but I dropped him.

I ran moderately hard for most of the beginning.  After getting some water within the final two miles, I picked it up.  I really just worked on using better form.  I stayed smooth.  As usually, I finished with my big kick.  I started it when I first saw the park and it actually ended up being too early.  Someone tried to race me, but it was crazy because I'm pretty sure he was in the marathon and still had a long way to go.

My goal was to finish under 46 minutes.  I didn't have a watch, so I'm not sure how good I did.  One of my teammates said it was like 42 minutes.  I wish I knew because that's much better than I expected.  It was great and I didn't have to destroy myself either.  I'm definitely getting stronger.

I had not met any of the girls on our team yet.  It was good to meet and get to know them.  It was also fun finishing so well.  It was a blast.  I felt good that I didn't cost us anything because I'm slower than I used to be.  We were 18 minutes behind the first place team anyway.

5 miles - ???