Reaching the Beach, again
Sep. 22nd, 2021 08:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ilanaramaLast weekend I ran Reach the Beach for the third time (2019, 2015). As usual, it was super fun and I got very little sleep!
This year for the first time I was in Van 2, and chose to be runner #7, which meant I was the first in the van to run, and ran legs 7 (7.5 miles 'hard'), 19 (6.3 'very hard'), and 31 (2.4 'easy'), totaling 16.2 miles. Our team consisted of people who had been on it before, but some of the members had slacked off due to Covid-19 or new jobs or new babies etc, and so we estimated our paces on the slow side, so as to start a bit earlier than previous years (turned out to be 10am). The weather was relatively cool, cloudy, and humid; the first two were great, the last...not so great.
Since we wouldn't be running our first legs until the six people in the first van had finished, we had a bit of extra time in the morning to buy snacks; then we drove to the start at Bretton Woods Ski Area just in time to cheer Jeff as he started on the first leg. The transition to leg 2 was very close to the start, and the transition to 3 was on the other side of the parking lot, so we cheered those runners as well. We drove to the next transition, cheered once more (and also failed to resist the lure of ice cream cones, which - okay, maybe that's not traditional race fueling, but it was tasty!), and then drove to a park to walk around and stretch out a bit. Then we headed to the major transition at Attitash Ski Area, where I took the 'baton' (an orange slap bracelet) from Annie and took off on my first leg at 1:37pm.
The 7.5 miles was pretty, especially once we turned off the main highway and onto a smaller road. The trees were lushly green and just beginning to change color. I kept up a good tempo-ish pace, adjusting for the rolling hills (lots of them, but none super long or super steep). Near the end of the leg, the route turned in on the access road to Echo Lake State Park, then took a sharp turn onto a trail that led down to the lake and around its edge - beautiful! I knew I was getting close to the end of the leg, and so I accelerated to get a fast finish; as it turned out I ran the last half mile at a 6:26 pace(!!! That's faster than my track half miles, though of course they're not at 520') and finished the leg at a 7:58 average pace.
We then leapfrogged our runners for the next five legs, getting in to the next van exchange at a middle school and welcoming our last runner around 6:45pm - a perfect time to take advantage of the food offered as a fundraiser for the class trip! (I, uh, ate a lot on this race. I don't know why, I just always felt hungry!) After dinner, we got back in the van and drove to the next transition area, another school. This was a place where we planned to get some sleep!
The last two times I'd done this race I had little luck trying to sleep in the van. Several of my teammates had brought tarps and sleeping bags; I had been following the forecasts before I left Durango, and, seeing a good chance of rain, I had taken up a large portion of my carry-on bag (my only luggage) with Britt's one-person tent, which he used for hunting, along with an inflatable sleeping pad and a thin sleeping bag (which I always brought). I set up on the field behind the school, and honestly, when the rain began maybe half an hour later, I felt quite smug! But it was really just a drizzle, and lasted for only 20 minutes or so. I managed to get a little sleep, though not much. I'd set my alarm for midnight, but I was awake long before. I packed up, put my stuff in the van, jogged to the porta-potties, and was ready to go when Annie came into the transition at 12:45am.
To say I'm not used to running at night is an understatement. I basically only do it during this race! I had borrowed a blinky vest from a teammate, and wore my backpacking headlamp, but because of the humidity (it was mizzling, which is a word I learned from the works of Rosemary Sutcliff - a cross between mist and drizzle) all I could see was tiny droplets in the beam of light, and my glasses fogged up completely every ten minutes or so. I was wearing an Icebreaker merino wool singlet and skirt, which quickly became sodden and clung to my body.
And the leg was, as advertised, 'very hard'. One of my teammates, who had done this leg before, mentioned that there was a very long and steep hill early in the run. Unfortunately, there was also a long and steep hill in the middle of the run, and also a steep bit (fortunately not so long) at the end. In 6.3 miles, I climbed a total of 813 feet (according to the map-corrected elevation data), but as the ending elevation was only 50' higher than the starting elevation, you can bet that I descended a lot as well. I ended up walking for two stretches, which was easy to do when I could see the lights of the runners ahead also walking. And the downhill wasn't exactly blazing, as I could barely see (fogged glasses, nighttime) and the road surface was rough enough that I was nervous about tripping. My slowest mile was 10:26, my fastest 8:13, and though I was a bit disappointed with my average pace of 9:02, I have to admit that this is faster than I run in training, and certainly a good pace for this steep and hilly route - at night!
For obvious reasons I don't have a photo of the foggy dark, but I do have one of some of my teammates in the subsequent foggy morning:
The last of my van-mates finished his run around 6:30am and we headed off as van 1 took over. I was definitely falling asleep in the van and feeling pretty woozy, so despite having eaten some delicious chicken-and-carrot stew around 5, when we stopped at a donut shop I bought a donut and some coffee, which kept me going until we stopped at the next transition area. The weather was beginning to clear up, so I didn't set up the tent but laid out the rain fly as a tarp near one of my teammates, and managed to get maybe half an hour more sleep, which was awesome! Just after I woke up, Britt texted me wishing me a happy birthday - oh, yeah, I turned 58 today! I packed up my stuff and went out to the road for my last leg, just before 11am.
Fortunately, this was an easy one, 2.4 miles mostly flat or downhill. Good thing, as I was pretty darn exhausted! Still, I managed to hold a 7:50 pace, and when I came into the transition, all my teammates (both vans!) sang Happy Birthday to me, along with all the other runners who were there - it was lovely and very heartwarming!
All the legs for this last bit were pretty short, and we had to hustle to get to each transition until the last runner. After Sully went out on the very last leg, we headed for the parking lot at the beach and had time to quickly down one beer before running to the finish chute, where we met him and ran together across the finish line. Yay!
Our total time was 28:24, about 20 minutes slower than 2019 (RTB didn't run in 2020), but our placement was much better as 1) we qualified for Masters this year, and 2) there were only about half as many teams as before. We ended up 49/251 teams overall, or about at the 20% mark, and as 2/20 of Masters teams - 2/6 Masters Men's teams, since to be a "mixed" team we'd need to have 6/12 women and we only had four.
In conclusion:
This year for the first time I was in Van 2, and chose to be runner #7, which meant I was the first in the van to run, and ran legs 7 (7.5 miles 'hard'), 19 (6.3 'very hard'), and 31 (2.4 'easy'), totaling 16.2 miles. Our team consisted of people who had been on it before, but some of the members had slacked off due to Covid-19 or new jobs or new babies etc, and so we estimated our paces on the slow side, so as to start a bit earlier than previous years (turned out to be 10am). The weather was relatively cool, cloudy, and humid; the first two were great, the last...not so great.
Since we wouldn't be running our first legs until the six people in the first van had finished, we had a bit of extra time in the morning to buy snacks; then we drove to the start at Bretton Woods Ski Area just in time to cheer Jeff as he started on the first leg. The transition to leg 2 was very close to the start, and the transition to 3 was on the other side of the parking lot, so we cheered those runners as well. We drove to the next transition, cheered once more (and also failed to resist the lure of ice cream cones, which - okay, maybe that's not traditional race fueling, but it was tasty!), and then drove to a park to walk around and stretch out a bit. Then we headed to the major transition at Attitash Ski Area, where I took the 'baton' (an orange slap bracelet) from Annie and took off on my first leg at 1:37pm.
The 7.5 miles was pretty, especially once we turned off the main highway and onto a smaller road. The trees were lushly green and just beginning to change color. I kept up a good tempo-ish pace, adjusting for the rolling hills (lots of them, but none super long or super steep). Near the end of the leg, the route turned in on the access road to Echo Lake State Park, then took a sharp turn onto a trail that led down to the lake and around its edge - beautiful! I knew I was getting close to the end of the leg, and so I accelerated to get a fast finish; as it turned out I ran the last half mile at a 6:26 pace(!!! That's faster than my track half miles, though of course they're not at 520') and finished the leg at a 7:58 average pace.
We then leapfrogged our runners for the next five legs, getting in to the next van exchange at a middle school and welcoming our last runner around 6:45pm - a perfect time to take advantage of the food offered as a fundraiser for the class trip! (I, uh, ate a lot on this race. I don't know why, I just always felt hungry!) After dinner, we got back in the van and drove to the next transition area, another school. This was a place where we planned to get some sleep!
The last two times I'd done this race I had little luck trying to sleep in the van. Several of my teammates had brought tarps and sleeping bags; I had been following the forecasts before I left Durango, and, seeing a good chance of rain, I had taken up a large portion of my carry-on bag (my only luggage) with Britt's one-person tent, which he used for hunting, along with an inflatable sleeping pad and a thin sleeping bag (which I always brought). I set up on the field behind the school, and honestly, when the rain began maybe half an hour later, I felt quite smug! But it was really just a drizzle, and lasted for only 20 minutes or so. I managed to get a little sleep, though not much. I'd set my alarm for midnight, but I was awake long before. I packed up, put my stuff in the van, jogged to the porta-potties, and was ready to go when Annie came into the transition at 12:45am.
To say I'm not used to running at night is an understatement. I basically only do it during this race! I had borrowed a blinky vest from a teammate, and wore my backpacking headlamp, but because of the humidity (it was mizzling, which is a word I learned from the works of Rosemary Sutcliff - a cross between mist and drizzle) all I could see was tiny droplets in the beam of light, and my glasses fogged up completely every ten minutes or so. I was wearing an Icebreaker merino wool singlet and skirt, which quickly became sodden and clung to my body.
And the leg was, as advertised, 'very hard'. One of my teammates, who had done this leg before, mentioned that there was a very long and steep hill early in the run. Unfortunately, there was also a long and steep hill in the middle of the run, and also a steep bit (fortunately not so long) at the end. In 6.3 miles, I climbed a total of 813 feet (according to the map-corrected elevation data), but as the ending elevation was only 50' higher than the starting elevation, you can bet that I descended a lot as well. I ended up walking for two stretches, which was easy to do when I could see the lights of the runners ahead also walking. And the downhill wasn't exactly blazing, as I could barely see (fogged glasses, nighttime) and the road surface was rough enough that I was nervous about tripping. My slowest mile was 10:26, my fastest 8:13, and though I was a bit disappointed with my average pace of 9:02, I have to admit that this is faster than I run in training, and certainly a good pace for this steep and hilly route - at night!
For obvious reasons I don't have a photo of the foggy dark, but I do have one of some of my teammates in the subsequent foggy morning:
The last of my van-mates finished his run around 6:30am and we headed off as van 1 took over. I was definitely falling asleep in the van and feeling pretty woozy, so despite having eaten some delicious chicken-and-carrot stew around 5, when we stopped at a donut shop I bought a donut and some coffee, which kept me going until we stopped at the next transition area. The weather was beginning to clear up, so I didn't set up the tent but laid out the rain fly as a tarp near one of my teammates, and managed to get maybe half an hour more sleep, which was awesome! Just after I woke up, Britt texted me wishing me a happy birthday - oh, yeah, I turned 58 today! I packed up my stuff and went out to the road for my last leg, just before 11am.
Fortunately, this was an easy one, 2.4 miles mostly flat or downhill. Good thing, as I was pretty darn exhausted! Still, I managed to hold a 7:50 pace, and when I came into the transition, all my teammates (both vans!) sang Happy Birthday to me, along with all the other runners who were there - it was lovely and very heartwarming!
All the legs for this last bit were pretty short, and we had to hustle to get to each transition until the last runner. After Sully went out on the very last leg, we headed for the parking lot at the beach and had time to quickly down one beer before running to the finish chute, where we met him and ran together across the finish line. Yay!
Our total time was 28:24, about 20 minutes slower than 2019 (RTB didn't run in 2020), but our placement was much better as 1) we qualified for Masters this year, and 2) there were only about half as many teams as before. We ended up 49/251 teams overall, or about at the 20% mark, and as 2/20 of Masters teams - 2/6 Masters Men's teams, since to be a "mixed" team we'd need to have 6/12 women and we only had four.
In conclusion:
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