Massachusetts Inaugural Race to the Beach 2011!

Now that I am almost fully recovered, I think I'm ready to sign up for RTB 2011.  What a great relay...200 miles of pure...wait, 203 miles of exhausting fun.

My team, Dude, where's my van? started early at 8:30 am at Mt. Wachusetts in Princeton, Massachusetts.  We weren't surprised to be one of the first heats.  We had no delusions of speed nor grandeur. Our philosophy, if you can't bring the speed you better bring the tutus.

Jan reminding us that we must not forget safety.
Proper reflective gear only enhances the look.

This is the end of my first leg.  I started around 3:00 and averaged a 9:25 mile on the 6.11 mi. leg.  Not bad since I assumed I would average closer to 10:00. The route gave me a beautiful tour of Berlin and it was fun to see so many towns where my students live.  We are lucky that spring was so late this year as all the flowering trees looked as good as we did.

My second leg started near Wrentham at 12:00 am and was supposed to be 8.11 miles.  I had managed to eat well and nap throughout the afternoon so I was feeling really good.  The first couple miles were really dark and it was challenging to navigate the fog with the headlamp. I finally just ran with my lamp in my hand and was happy to get on a main road two miles in.  My legs felt great and I couldn't have asked for better weather.  Four miles in and I hear "on your right" and out of nowhere a runner flies by me.  He kindly said, "Lookin' good." as he made me "roadkill".  This didn't discourage me, as I knew that we would start getting passed consistently over the next 16 hours.  I learned later that his team had started at 2:30 pm.  Again, tutus, not speed.

At mile 6.25, Charles, our fearless captain met me with water.  I was feeling great and ready to end the run in about 15 minutes.  My time looked solid and I was excited that we had managed to shave nearly a half hour off our projected time.  About a half mile later I was met by a driver of a pickup truck asking me why I was running in the middle of the night.  I answer him quickly and kept running, assuming I would be done in a mere 10 minutes.  Ten minutes later I got interrupted again by another truck of questionably sober teenagers asking me what I was up to.  I begin to run faster as my adrenaline kicked.  I think it took me another half mile to realize I hadn't seen a race arrow for a very long time. At this point I ran for another couple minutes looking for directions and then turned back in search of yellow signs.  I think I must of run over three additional miles in search of my wrong turn.  Fortunately Charles found me at my original wrong step and told me to get in the van. I refused insisting I would finish the leg on my own legs.  I managed to totally blow our cushion as well as scare the tutus off my team. They were great sports about it and in the end it made for an interesting story.

I was able to crash in the van for the next few hours thanks to our excellent navigational crew Charles and Andrea.  My final leg started at about 9:00 am on Saturday.  It was 5.85 miles and felt twice as long as my night leg.  It was all mental and all I can really say about it is that I ran it all, barely. I must have been passed by at least ten runners.  In the end it was great to be done and I was ready to cheer on the rest of my team.

Here we are in Westport waiting for our final runner.  We ran 11 runners instead of 12.  This worked out well as we had a bunch of generous team members willing to pull extra miles at the end.  Three of our final runners each ran four legs, their final legs being the hottest and sunniest ones of the entire race. Thanks Ed, Bob and Randy!

We got to all run in together at the end. I have absolutely no idea 

what this runner was going in this short other than giving us a visual 

for what we feared might happen at the finish line.

Thanks to "Dude! Where's my van?" for being part of a great weekend.  A special thanks to Charles for organizing us and Andrea for roping me into this crazy plan.  For me running is about challenging myself and getting to know new people. RTB definitely provided that venue and I look forward to running with these dudes again soon.