The Mettlingers: Great Lakes Relay--Day 1

Wow. What a race. I can't believe how much fun it was! The course was a total of about 270 miles from the eastern side of Michigan to the Lake Michigan shore. The course is far from a straight shot between the two coasts and actually winds around quite a bit. For example, Day 1 mostly consisted of running south rather than west. The logistics of a race like this are insanely complicated. There were 76 teams total, each with 10 people and 2 or 3 support vehicles. That means that at every exchange there had to be room for 76 cars to line up and wait! There were restricted exchanges where only the car with the appropriate runner could park so you had to be sure that the right runners were in the right cars. Thanks to Randy, our fearless team leader, I didn't have to think much about the logistics except enough to be glad I didn't have to think much. This is a map of the first day's route:

On the first day we ran about 95.5 miles. Our team was 10 runners strong, with 9 people running two legs each day and one person running one leg each day. The race starts at 6 am every day and teams are expected to finish by 7 pm. If you don't think your team can finish by 7 pm, you have to do what is called concurrent running where the last few runners run their legs simultaneously. By adding the split times of each runner, you can calculate what time you would have come in had you continued to relay. We were very proud to finish the first day at 6:53 pm without concurrent running!

Meredith started the race on Friday morning in a deep fog which evolved into a light rain until about 10 am. By the time I ran my first leg it was 100% humidity and maybe 80 degrees. My favorite running weather... HA! My first leg was 4.6 miles on nice sandy roads. The rain had packed the sand down enough that it really was an ideal surface. When I finished the leg, I had sweat out about 20 gallons of water, but besides that it went really well. As the day progressed it got hotter and hotter. When I ran my second leg, 4.3 miles, it was probably 90 degrees and still humid. The description of my second leg said "A nice trail through the woods, some sand and gravel" HA! I'm pretty sure they had dump trucks hauling sand in to the woods there just for the runners. The sand was insane, and to make it worse, all the sand was concentrated in the first half of the trail which was entirely uphill. Awesome. I made it through the leg, but it was mighty painful. I was somewhat jubilated by the fact that I passed three people on the way. Apparently one of the girls that finished just in front of me was saying that her GPS told her she was doing 15 minute miles in there. I managed under 9 minute miles, but that's a full minute slower than my first leg pace! I was really glad to be done by then. The day finished on the bridge over the Au Sable river--a really gorgeous river that felt wonderful to swim in after a long, hot, humid day. Heather especially enjoyed it since she got to jump in directly after her last running leg.

Here are some photos of my fabulous team members from the first day. There are a lot of them, but I just love running photos--you don't have to look at them all : )

Alan hands off to Ken