This is a ridiculously long race report, but since it’s about a 209.2 mile race, maybe that’s OK.

TLDR version:  ran the Blue Ridge relay on Friday and Saturday – Did well for a Phat old man, three legs, each one faster than the previous.  Average paces of 8:19, 7:36, and 7:28.  Our team finished in just under 30 hours.  Good times, good people, good experience.

The Blue Ridge Relay is a 209.2 mile road race, with teams of 4 to 12.  It starts Friday morning near Grayson Highlands State park in West Virginia, and finishes Saturday afternoon in downtown Asheville, NC.  I could go into much more detail on the relay, but if you’re really interested you can learn all you want by going here:  http://blueridgerelay.com/

This was my first time running the relay and I was a member of one of two 12 person teams hosted by a company affiliation.  Our team (Team Bill) was made up of 8 men and 4 women, ranging in age from early 20’s to me at 64.  Since we did not really know any of the other 182 teams competing, and we were not in danger of winning any of the overall awards, our competition was a friendly one with our other team, and really ourselves – just to see what we could do.

The race consisted of 36 separate legs, rated as easy, medium, hard, very hard, and mountain goat hard.  My legs, 12, 24, and 36 (the glory leg since it’s the finish); rated as hard, easy and very hard.  Let me say right now that “easy” is only in comparison to the other legs.  My “easy” leg started with a 200 foot ascent in the first mile, and then three miles downhill to the finish.  This leg started (for me) at 3:06 Saturday morning.  More on that later.

The coordination of the event is truly remarkable.  The logistics of coordinating the movements of more than 2,000 runners and their more than 300 transports vehicles over 35 separate exchange zones over two days and nights and 200 miles is not an undertaking I would ever take.  And great kudos to all the volunteers that made this a mostly effortless process for the participants.

Our team started the day with a goal of finishing the 209 miles by 3:00 PM Saturday afternoon.  That would be a total time of 31 hours and an average pace of about 8:55 per mile.  Two events at the start put us a bit into a hole; there was a tree down on the second leg, so our start time was delayed by 30 minutes and a few extra miles were added to the course to detour around.  Also, our second runner went a bit off course and added some time getting back.  End result was my first leg, many hours later, began at 4:51PM, about 35 minutes later than expected.

Leg 12 was listed as a hard leg, 6.1 miles, run almost exclusively on the Blue Ridge parkway.  I had read many thoughts on how best to pace for these types of long range relays was to plan a pace that you would be able to hold for the total miles you would be running.  My miles added to about 17 so I figured something between my half and full marathon times – 8:00 pace sounded good.

The first two miles were relatively flat with two small ups of 100 feet and 70 feet and a down of about the same; I average right at my target of 8:00 for those two miles.  Mile three had a 270 foot climb, and mile 4 had another 270, so split times fell to 8:34 and 9:48.  Mile 5 was all screaming downhill – 7:13, and the final mile was mostly flat with a devilish climb of 80 feet right at the end.  Total time for the leg was 49:34 – average pace of 8:19.  This was about 5 minutes better than the overall projected average, so I gained a little of our lost time back.  The Garmin distance of 5.96 was a little shorter than the listed distance of 6.1.  One point to make here is the leg is listed as having great views from the parkway.  I’m sure there were, but I’ve never taken the time when racing to look around much.

Since I’m the last runner in our van that means we now get a bit of a break.  Let me take a moment here to explain the van activity.  With a team of 12, you have two vans – an active van, and a resting van.  The active van is dropping off one runner, and then moving ahead to the next exchange zone (EZ) to drop off the next runner, and collect the runner completing that leg.  Van 2, the resting van moves ahead 6 EZs for a 5 hour or so wait.  EZs 6, 12, 18, 24 and 30 are called transition zones, and these are the most congested as both vans from the teams congregate there.

With my first leg (leg 12) completed, and with a 5 hour break,  we decided to meet up at Mellow Mushroom in Blowing Rock with the other team’s van 2.  Leg 13 runs through Blowing Rock and finishes only a few blocks from the Mellow Mushroom so we were able to cheer runners on as we sat outside and quaffed a few brews.  While enjoying our pizza and beer we noticed Roy Williams, BB coach at Univ. of North Carolina heading to a table.  Turns out he was a van driver for one of the teams (don’t know which one).  Several of our team had their picture taken with Roy (I can post if anyone is really interested).

After dinner we headed to EZ 18 for some rest before our next legs of 18 through 24.  We expected this to be around 11:00 PM.  The EZ was crowed, and got more so as the evening went on, with literally hundreds of big, 11 passenger vans.  With teams cheering their runners at each exchange, there was little actually sleeping going on, but we did manage a few hours of legs up and eyes shut rest.

A little after 11, Kayla, our number 7 runner, began leg 19.  As an aside, Kayla is training for her second marathon; Chicago.  We began the drop off and pick up process that brought me to leg 24, my second leg.  This was listed as an easy 4 miles.  Let me say that no run that starts at 3 o’clock in the morning should be classified as easy.  This run started with a short drop, then a 200 foot climb over the next mile.  I don’t normally consider that “easy”.  The remaining 3 miles did drop about 500 feet so the only challenge was to look for the blinking blue lights that designated turns.  Didn’t want to get lost in the middle of nowhere.  (My apologies to those who live in Bakersville, NC, who I’m sure don’t consider their small town to be nowhere).  My splits for this run were 8:25, 7:06, 7:15, and 7:20.  Total time = 30:06 for an average 7:36.  It’s now 3:36 AM, and we’re back on schedule, having made up the lost time from the beginning delays and are about 10 minutes ahead of our 3:00 PM finish time.

We are now at the 4^th transition zone, so once again hundreds of vans converging in one location.  The volunteer fire house puts on a fundraiser and provides showers, and baked potatoes with all the fixings.  Having just finished my leg, the shower sounded great, not so much the baked potatoes with chili.  By 4:30 we’re on our way to transition zone 5 (EZ 30) for another 5 hour break, and hopefully some sleep.  It’s never easy sleeping across a bench seat in a van, but we were in a more quiet area and time passed without my being aware, so I must have slept for a few hours.  Around 8 o’clock we’re all up and about.  This EZ featured a pancake breakfast (I passed – but the coffee was a wonderful).

While we slept, our teammates in Van 1 had not only gained back another 10 minutes, but had also put our team about 20 minutes ahead of the other team.  Kayla was again readying for her leg – this one a “mountain goat” rated 6.5 miles with 1,400 foot elevation change.  And to make it all better, it had started to rain.  Glad this one wasn’t mine.

The next leg was listed as very hard because of a steep decent and the distance – 9.4 miles.  Our fastest runner, Ricky, blew this one away with a 58 minute time.  Wow!

My last leg is the final leg of the relay, and was also rated very hard for the distance (6.8) and the descent (1,268).  We arrived at the EZ with a 30 minute lead on our other team, and easily ahead of our projected 3:00 PM finish time.  I began the leg with a goal of 55 minutes, but would be OK with 60.  (While waiting for my leg to begin, Roy Williams pulled up in his van – sighting #2).

This leg began with a moderate climb of 300 feet over the first mile.  I managed to eek out a 9:18 pace for this mile.  As I crested the top another runner collected me as road kill.  (Side note:  road kill is the term all teams use to describe other runners passed during the course of their legs.  It’s a friendly part of the overall competition.  I claimed 3 road kills in each of my two prior legs – and this was the first time I had been passed).

This youngster passed me with conviction and continued to move ahead effortlessly.  I was OK with this.  There was another runner a few hundred yards ahead so I figured I could at least break even.  As I passed this runner somewhere around the two mile mark (pace for this mile was 8:02) I heard another runner come up behind me.  Instead of passing he tucked in a few yards back.  I sped up and slowed down a couple of times to see what he would do, but he stayed in place.  So the challenge was on.

Mile three was 7:03 and mile four was 7:07.  I began to tire a bit here and mile five slowed to 7:19 but my shadow declined to take the lead.  In mile six, the grade of decent increased from the previous 5% to 9 to 10%.  I decided that now was the time to see how dedicated my shadow was.  I opened up and allowed the grade to dictate my pace, no breaking, just full out strides.  Pace for this mile was 6:31.  We were now closing in on the finish, the decent was over and we made a right turn onto a flat stretch to the finish.  I looked behind and my shadow was now a good hundred yards back.   Not wanting to take any chances of being collected as road kill, I kept pushing to the end.  Final .6 miles was at 6:33 pace.  Total time was 48:48 and an average pace of 7:28.  Very near my current 10K race pace.  Not too bad after two days of running with little sleep.  And one final piece of good news – out team broke the 30 hour mark by a few seconds.  My shadow needs much of the credit for that.  Without him pushing me for 4 miles I doubt I would have finished within 5 minutes of that time.

Overall stats?  Ran 16.6 miles in 1 hour, 28 minutes and 29 seconds.  That works out to an average pace of 7:44 – 16 seconds better than my goal going in.  I’m good with that.

Overall, this was a great adventure that I would recommend with no reservations.  Will I run it again?  Probably not, but certainly glad I can add it to my list of accomplishments.

And one final note - if anyone actually reads to the end of this please use the term EZ in your comment.

The coordination of the event is truly remarkable.  The logistics of coordinating the movements of more than 2,000 runners and their more than 300 transports vehicles over 35 separate exchange zones over two days and nights and 200 miles is not an undertaking I would ever take. 

+1

These things never cease to amaze me. EZ. How are you feeling after running in spurts like that?

EZ.  

I have friends who run Ragnar relays here in California, which sound like this run.  But I think they only have about 60 vans participating!

Great job!!!  I agree, the logistics of an event like that are just insane.

Nice report!  I don't know how you remember all those details!  Congrats on your relay race!

I've always thought taking part in one of these would be pretty cool.  Although I don't know how well I'd do on no sleep.  It certainly wouldn't be EZ   Did you do any specific training for running at oddball hours of the night?

The "mountain goat hard" is still cracking me up.

I've always thought taking part in one of these would be pretty cool.  Although I don't know how well I'd do on no sleep.  It certainly wouldn't be EZ   Did you do any specific training for running at oddball hours of the night?

 

The "mountain goat hard" is still cracking me up.

And they were serious about the MGH too.  Lots of walking involved in those.

As to sleep deprivation training - nope, just tried to rest as much as I could during our "inactive van" times.

 

Thanks cyber.  Not quite as huge as a sub 3:15 marathon, but not too bad for a phat old man.

I've always found running downhill to be something I can do.  I think it has something to do with a vertical lift of less than an inch.  No real pounding results.  

Maybe, and maybe not. I'm 45, not in your AG, and I've never run in those conditions, so I really have no basis on which to compare the two.