Notes
THE GLORY LEG. Finally got to use the flats. Justin cruised in handed off to me, and I was off. I quickly ate up the dude ahead of me, and kept cruisin. This leg had a lot of elevation change. Not many small hills, just long ass up and downhills. It got a bit warmer out since the morning, but the weather was still pretty damn good for a run.
This was the anchor leg, so it ends on the beach of Lake Michigan where I get to jump straight into the water. The first half wasn't much other than a bit of pavement and gravel road, but the second half was abusive. To start, the directions said something about merging with a road after 1.4 miles or something like that, but you weren't suppose to merge. You were suppose to exit that road and turn off onto another. The two roads weren't even the same material, one was pavement, and the second one was gravel. There weren't any signs indicating which road is which either which was annoying. I was so close to not getting lost on the GLR, but here we are. I got to the top of this area after a long ass uphill, turned around, knowing that I was definitely not in the right area, and was bout to head back when I saw 4 other teams going the same way as me. I kept turning them around, and we all headed back to the "merge" of the roads. I turned the Illinois Elite team around almost right after they made the wrong turn, saving them about a whole ass mile of wrong directions. From there, it was a steep steep downhill of pavement that I couldn't even stretch my legs out far enough to go fast. It's one of those hills you have to slow yourself down on otherwise you'll roll down like a rock on. We burst through the town at the and finished on a quick straightaway to the beachfront. In all, From the top of the wrong area to the beachfront, there was ~700ft of downhill in about a mile. Even though I made the wrong turn, I still kept up the speed keeping the 6 miles sub 6 pace. It was only supposed to be 4.9 miles, so I was looking forward to comparing this to an 8k, but oh well.
All in all, this was an amazing weekend, and I am so happy I got to take part in it. Tons of fun hanging out with the club for an extended period of time for the first time since I've never gone to Nationals or anything yet. Was pretty cool meeting some of the old hags of alumni we have. WE LOVE YOU BRETT! Thank you so much for all of the work you put in, Somerfield. We really do appreciate it, and I think you set up a damn good outline for us to easily follow for future GLR's.
Pretty damn proud of the bois on my team. We flew. Every single one of us surprised me. We all were fast as hell out there, and were consistent with it too. We were complimented many times by the other Illinois teams for our speed, and they meant it. Look forward to cross season bois. Don't let it out of your sight.
Couldn't have finished this thing without our official sponsors: Hamm's and McDonald's. 25 McChickens don't belong in a human body. The two words that summed up the weekend the best (quoted from Rhode) "irresponsibly fast".