The end of summer means many things to New Englanders --
cooler temperatures, halloween decorations showing up in local stores, and
apple picking. For triathletes, it means
triathlon season is quickly winding down as days get shorter and open water
gets colder. This also marks the
transition to fall running classics.
For many years now I've been running in Reach the Beach with
a team of friends. For those of you who
haven't heard of it, this is a running relay up in NH that starts at Cannon
Mountain and finishes up roughly 200 miles later at Hampton Beach, drifting
across the back roads of New Hampshire and crossing the "rolling
hills" that NH brings with it. The
race course is split into 36 legs. The
vast majority of teams do this with 12 runners and two vans, and you must
rotate runners in sequence. That means
that each runner runs three times. The
legs vary in distance from 3 to just under 9 miles, and most runners end up
doing 12-18 miles.
Now I've been doing RTB for about the past 10 years, and
we've always done it with a full team (usually 12 people, occasionally with 11
when someone gets sick at the last minute).
But last year we were talking during the race about putting together an
"ultra" team. In RTB, an ultra
is a team with 6 or fewer people. This
finally came together last winter when my team from last year's RTB was getting
together at Red Bones, and we realized we had enough crazy folks to stand up an
ultra team!
Fast forward to last week...we had our six people ready to
go and we had our legs selected for who was going to run what. Now being an ultra team, we chose to run two legs
at a time to give us a reasonable amount of rest between our
"ups". Unfortunately, one of
our team members had to pull out at the last minute for a family medical
emergency. Now if someone backs out of
full team, that means three people will have to run an extra leg. With an ultra doing two-up legs, that means
that three people have to do two extra legs.
For me, that meant I was bumping my mileage up from a personal record of
32 miles in a 36 hour period to 41 miles!
Luckily we had a strong bunch of runners!
Now back to the actual race start! Being an ultra team, we started pretty early
(11am), and I was on deck as runner #1.
As we were driving up (with a dry weather forecast), and came into
Franconia Notch, it started to rain heavily.
It couldn't have been all bad, because we saw a full rainbow! When we arrived at Cannon, there was actually
sleet bouncing off the roofs of the vans!
(It's still summer on the calendar!)
Needless to say, the weather gods were looking down on
us! Before my heat went off, it dried
out a little bit and the fog lifted. I
got a little wet, but it wasn't too bad.
Now I was up for legs 1 and 2.
Leg 1 was largely down hill at the beginning, but then it leveled
out. Now, I had to pace myself. Most of
the other runners out there were picking it up at the end, but I had to keep
reminding myself, that I had another 3 miles to go (nevermind the 6 more legs
to come later)! Once I came up on the
transition area, one of the coolest parts is being able to run through transition
without stopping and yelling "ULTRA!"
Once I was on leg #2, I got passed more than a few times! Most everyone else was doing a single 3 mile
leg on fresh feet. But it's just an
amazing feeling knowing that you're in this doing an ultra for the first
time!! One of the highlights for me of
these first two legs was seeing Kate O'Malley (Blumberg) a few times during my
first run. The second time I saw her,
she was waving her BTT transition towel!!
After finishing up my first couple legs, it's time to hop
back in the van, get some food down (pretzels, fig newtons, bananas, etc) and
then help with some of the driving. Oh
yeah, and I took a lot of pictures of my teammates!
One of the differences on an ultra team is that you only
have one van! This means a lot! It means you're always ON! Someone is always running; you don't get a
chance to go off course and grab some dinner, and you can't pull ahead and get
a few hours of sleep while the other van runs their legs. But it does mean you get to spend a LOT of
time with your friends! And you never
have to worry about getting in touch with the other van to let them know that
they're going to be starting in 20 minutes!
My next leg came up at 8:20pm. I was up for my shortest pair
of legs #11 and #12 (4.8 and 3.9 miles).
So it was nighttime and this means it time to don the reflective vest,
front and back blinkies, and a headlamp. This pair of legs was downhill for the
first mile and then mostly flat. So I
just hammered it with everything I had.
The nighttime legs are a lot of fun because you can see the bouncing
blinking light of the runners in front of you!
It feels like a video game! And
you're in NH, so you look up and the stars are just amazingly vivid!
So after finishing up my second pair of legs, I'm halfway
done!! Four legs down, four legs to
go!! Then it's time to cool down and
support my teammates. A couple hours
later, I pull my sleeping bag and ear plugs out and setup camp in the back row
of the van! I was actually able to get a
good solid 3+ hours of sleep in! That's
better than I've done on a normal 12 person team!
Next thing you know, I'm lying on the back row, and I hear
Bert and Tom wondering aloud when they should wake Matt up! So now it's quarter past four in the morning
and I have a half hour to get my stuff together and get ready to run one of my
long legs. Legs #21 and #22 totaled 12
miles together, and were labeled as hard and easy. Again, this was my second set of nighttime
legs. The first leg was really hard (two
big hills), and I just kept hammering it on the second half. This was a really neat leg though. I had some tough work at the beginning, and
then, about an hour in, dusk broke and as I was cresting one hill, I was
overlooking the valley and there was a cloud hovering below as I looked down.
Oh, I forgot to mention, my first three pairs of legs were
more or less winter runs! Before legs
#1/#2, I was sitting around in my heavy down hooded parka. And in legs #11/#12 and #21/#22, I was
wearing a t-shirt, arm warmers, thermal long sleeves, hat, gloves, and
tights! Temperatures were in the upper
20s! (in the summer!!)
Ok, so I'll skip ahead to my last set of legs. I was up my
fourth pair of legs for #31/#32. I was
up to run again at 1pm. This time the
weather was very different -- I was back in a t-shirt and shorts and it was
very warm! At this point, I didn't have
any more legs coming up, but I still had to finish another 9 miles. My legs were feeling it at this point! But I hammered it with everything I had left!
Once our last runner, Michelle, was on her way to her final
two legs, we headed straight for the beach and got there with just enough time
to meet her at the finish! And at the
finish area, I was able to catch up with some other BTTers who were on team
Schwetty Shortz!
Running RTB as an ultra team is a really cool
experience! It's a great bonding
experience with your team! And it's a
great test of your personal stamina and physical endurance! And now I think I've caught the RTB bug all
over again and I don't think I can go back to full 12-person team! I'm already excited to do it again in 2012 as
another ultra!
-- ultra hard coarr
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