MT. SI RELAY - 2008

A couple weeks ago, I participated in my third straight edition of the Mt. Si Relay. It is a 57-mile relay race in the Snoqualmie Valley, consisting of 5-person teams. This year I was joined by Chris (my only consistently recurring teammate the past 3 years!), Ryan (our star from the 2006 team), his friend Milah and my Lorinda.

We finished 46th out of 101 teams, in an overall time of 7:51:43. We were beat by about 9 solo runners. Ouch.

Personally, I did about the same as the year before: I hammered my first leg at about a 7:30 pace, but then had nothing left for my second leg -- a 7 mile gradual uphill climb to Rattlesnake Lake. In fact, I felt completely miserable for the entire hour-long climb. I think I may swap legs with someone next year!

Chris posted his pictures on Flickr.

Here are some samples:


Lorinda finishing up her first leg at Remlinger Farms:




Chris handing off to Milah for her second leg, after he narrowly escaped being shot while running through the gun range up the road:



My agony nearly over:



Ryan re-juicing:


My favorite moment of the day: as I neared the second exchange point at the conclusion of my first leg, I searched eagerly for Lorinda who was the next runner; I got to the exchange and she wasn't there! My team had taken their sweet time getting to the exchange point, and I guess I ran a little faster than I (or they) predicted. I stood there helplessly, shouting Lorinda's name, looking like a complete fool. Eventually I spotted her dawdling over by the portable toilets, and she finally caught sight of me. We only lost a couple minutes in this botched exchange. We could have taken 45th place!!! Oh well.

28 Days to My First Marathon...

I haven't blogged about running in quite awhile, partly because I didn't want to make a bold statement like "Things are going well and I'm not injured". From my prior posts, you can see that such comments are usually followed by an injury.

I'm excited that I've made it through 5 months of a 6 month marathon training schedule without having to take significant time off due to injury. I've missed a few workouts here and there, and made modifications to the schedule due to my chronically sore ankles (e.g. by cross-training in a swimming pool), but for the most part I have put in the work called for by the schedule.

Speaking of which, this past weekend was my final "long run". Yesterday, I ran 22 miles in 3 hours and 18 minutes. That is my all-time longest run. My quads are sore today, but the amazing thing to me is that I actually ran 22 miles and it didn't feel like that big of a deal. That is so weird. And now I feel confident that I'll be able to finish my first marathon four weeks from now. I won't qualify for Boston or anything crazy like that, but at least I will finish and I will NOT be injured. (I sure hope my ankles aren't reading my blog).