Being crammed into a van full of hot, stinky people, snaking along twisty mountain roads sounds more like something from a third world commute to a sweatshop making Nike apparel than something you’d actually pay money to do. But I did, and so did 140-something other teams in this year’s Blue Ridge Relay. I’ve done the BRR several times on 10- and 12-person teams over the years; some have been BYO-everything, others in such high style I’m too embarrassed to go into detail (but I loved it!), most were somewhere in between. This, however, was my first 6-person team. That’s 210 miles divided into 36 legs to be shared by 6 runners, at roughly 35 miles each. Sounded pretty good on paper – and it was. I’ve never had to do much in the way of planning for these events, having always gotten lucky enough to be asked to jump in on a team. Since I generally have enough fitness on board to make it easy to say yes, I was happy to get in here but unsure what to expect going all “ultra style” at the BRR. Even though I’m still wearing compression socks to recover from the most recent effort, you knew I couldn’t come away without something to say about how to do it next time.
- DO NOT underestimate the accumulated fatigue and how those will affect your runs later in the relay. This is the area where I believe having some legit ultra experience really is a plus. No offense, Ironpeeps, but being able to meter out effort with the understanding that you’ll need something in the tank say, 24 hours later, is something more likely in the ultra folks’ lexicon versus that of the triathlete. I’m not judging, I’m just saying’.
- You really can’t cram for downhills. On a 10 or 12 person team, you might get a shot at a serving of downhill. On a 6 person team, you’re getting waaaaay more than the USRDA of hills. You can chug up a hill any way that works for you, but it’s those downhill runs that’ll get you hurting sooner rather than later. If there’s any way for you to practice those in advance and get more comfortable with “flowing” and letting gravity do the work, the better off you’ll be. Again, that damned accumulated fatigue.
- And about those uphills. Ain’t no shame in walking here. Unless you’re a total machine, you’ll probably make better time power walking the really steep hills and save some energy for the remainder of the run.A skill worth practicing if you’re new to the idea, or just a non-believer.
- Underestimate your team’s goal pace. At least from my perspective on this solitary experience, I think our team’s goal pace, and thus estimated finish time, was way out of whack. Granted, I realize there was probably less math involved in getting Apollo 13 back to earth than in trying to calculate when we would finish, but my best guess based again on this one experience might be to take everyone’s marathon pace, add a minute to that and come up with an average. Based on our team’s just-under 33 hour finish, that’s about a 9:25 pace/4:05 26.2 finish. I’ll bet that math works out. In fact, I’m so convinced that’s a pretty good best guess, I’m going to copyright it. Now, where will I spend that Pulitzer Prize money?
- You don’t need as much sleep – or caffeine – as you think. Betsy and I traded time at the wheel and in the navigator’s seat and managed to sneak in a couple of naps during some of the longer legs in the overnight and early morning hours. Being aware of the space, time and distance between the current and upcoming routes makes planning for these critical, albeit short, periods time to sleep.The spans between runs didn’t seem as long as I had expected. Getting folks in and out of the van, changing clothes, getting fed and watered, then moving on to the next exchange absorbed a bit of that time. In the overnight and early morning hours, we hustled up even more so in order to get a few critical winks of sleep to get us through until the daylight hours. We had some Cokes and canned Starbucks on board, but there was plenty left at the end of the ride.
- Have a plan “b” and maybe even “c”. The “Varsity” van, as it was called, was faced with a “WTF are we gonna do now?” situation when one of their team members got sick. Well, at least she didn’t puke all up in the van. (Hey, neither did I!) They finally figured it out how to handle it without leaving her on the curb and made the best of the situation. This was probably more difficult to do in the heat of the moment and someone holding her hair out. Might be good to consider other “what if’s” as a team and discuss some options. Barf bags being one of those options. Probably good fodder for the drive up to the start.
- Decide early how – or if – you’d like to compete. Having two 6-person teams made this a lot of fun. Until one of the Varsity runners went out, it seemed like these two vans were going to be pretty well balanced and would have a good time trash talking and such and “racing” each other from EZ to EZ. Not that the experience itself isn’t a good one, but it’s helpful if everyone on board has the same attitude and expectations going into it. Personally, I’m not going to bust a gizzard trying to PR my portion if the guy – or gal – running the route after me is going to make a stop at the Mennonite bake sale they pass along their route. Unless they bring something back for me, too. They do make some nice baked goods…
A couple of other notes:
- DO NOT drape your nasty, sweat-soaked, testicle-hugging running shorts over the open bin that contains your team’s entire food supply. This opens up the definition of “nut allergies” to include just about everyone. At least in our van.
- If you’re going to add a tally of “kills” on the side of your van, you’d better damned well have more than 6. That’s just sad.
- DO NOT pack all your crap in crinkly, mylar bags. You may not think it’s that loud, but listening to that crap crinkling at 3AM while trying to take a 12 minute nap would likely be justifiable homicide in front of the right jury.
- If you get carsick AT ALL negotiate a deal with your team members in advance to sit in the front seat or drive. The longest stretch of straight road along the entire 210 miles is likely only about 100 feet long.
- Ivan Konermann takes some great pictures. If that brother can make ME look good, you know he’s got a gift. Or just some really badass editing software.