Notes
Leg A-20: Tommy Toyota Run
In short: Some miserable, nasty, sandy hills. The Relay’s hardest leg by far. Send out your toughest runner. It is scenic, if that's any consolation. Lots of "no-sign" roads. Like last year, the course will be marked with blue flags at the turns.
Scenery: 10; Difficulty: 10
Leg A-20: 9.4 miles
Sat around for a long while after my first leg just trying to get ready for this one, knew it was gonna be a tough one. Temps got really hot throughout the day, and runners on many longer legs were suffering from heat exhaustion and getting lost. One guy went to the hospital (thanks for saving him, Brett). By the time this leg, the last of the day, came along, I had thrown out the idea of trying to race this quick and instead, just wanted to survive. "Not trying to be a hero" was my motto. Official and Manaois made me bring a water bottle on this.
As for the leg, this was a really fun leg. First 3 miles were on the open dirt roads away from the exchange in town. Then the road narrowed a bit and I got a good amount of tree coverage. There was a big hill at like 3.5. Heard this was the worst hill on the whole route. Opted to just hike up in an effort to not over heat and put myself in a bad place early. Got to the top and started to run down, but the entire down hill was blocked with downed trees, so ended up walking most of the way down too. From there, I was back on some narrow dirt roads in the woods for a while. Passed a bunch of people, most of whom were concurrent I think. Around 5 got to Hills Road (aptly named) and encountered some big rolling hills than were pretty sandy at points. Focused on just continuing to move forward here and to run smoothly. These were never ending and tough. Thankfully had some big downhills after the ups to help recover. Saw Greg driving a car on the course at one point coming up a big hill, but he didn't see me. After making the last turn with ~2k to go, I realized I was close to what Somerfield ran last year, so picked it up to try and run faster than him.
Finished and felt really good about the effort! Tired, but didn't overdo it like I have on Day 1 in the past. Felt strong the entire time, and although the pace wasn't that fast, considering the heat, I'm proud of this one. Would like to give this one another go in a cooler year and see how fast I could run.