Notes
First leg of the GLR. Sat around at the exchange for quite a while before Evan came cruising in for the handoff. My leg was pretty darn straightforward. Sandy road/trail, pretty flat, and no turns or road changes. Drank a bit of coffee beforehand which wore off around mile 4, but I was able to cruise through. Got a kill but also got killed in there. Definitely made up ground on like 5 teams through the whole leg though. Pretty decent start to GLR.
(This is kind of for the Running2Win people/people who have never done GLR) I'll make a few points here instead of saying it in every log. This area of Michigan is SANDY. If I don't explicitly say that I ran on road or dirt, assume it was sand. It's kind of annoying, but it made for a much different running experience, and it's kind of cool to not be able to compare this to other runs through my life since it was such a different experience. Trail runs were TRAIL runs. I didn't get any, but some of these could barely even be considered trails. Looking down for a patted down trail was useless. You needed to keep your eyes peeled for a spray painted tree every few hundred meters or so. Swamp runs, fjording rivers, crossing highways, and all done by a set of loose directions that often got you even more lost. It was amazing.
Runs were from 6am to 7pm Friday/Saturday and 6am to 4pm Sunday. We camped out the first two nights at a campground and drove an hour to our first leg each morning. Saturday night, we camped out at a high school soccer field. Driving between legs was also an adventure. Roads were not roads. Most of them are basically atv trails that they mark as seasonal roads that cars can access. There were plenty of spots for cars to get stuck in mud or high water which only added to the fun of it.