Looooong overdue Reach the Beach race report

(I was originally going to post this in late September, to put it in context - the kitchen has been done since early October.)

Since my last update (September 10), a few things have happened, not the least of which is that we have made some significant progress on our complete kitchen remodel. The cabinets are in, the flooring is down, the walls are painted. All the new windows are in, the countertop is on (yesterday), the lights are in and functional. Still waiting for the stove and sink to get re-connected which will be huge (hopefully Friday). We've been doing dishes in the bathroom sink and grilling/picnicking/toaster ovening since the beginning of July. My wife's patience has been tremendous. She even let me have my way with the dining room wall, which was perfectly fine sheetrocked, but I got to cover it up with some huge (18" and 24" wide) pine boards from a local sawmill. I think it looks nice.

The running story is that I continued between 50-60 miles a week for two more weeks, then had to cool it a little last week, took a few easy days and a few days off, and resumed activities this Monday with a new focus...

The first week since my last update was getting ready for the Reach the Beach relay, which CMS 'mate JJ had invited me into only a couple weeks prior as a fill-in for an injured team member. The relay runs from Bretton Woods in the northwest corner of the White Mountain National Forest down to Hampton, NH on the southern coast. The distance has varied over the years, but this year's course was 203-ish miles. It's always around 200 miles.

Monday (the 11th) I did 5 miles with Nate Hausman from Gordon before lunch.

Tuesday I did 6 and a half miles in the morning and then 3 and a half at night in the dark with a headlamp and reflective vest to get ready for Reach the Beach - two of my three legs were in the dark.

Wednesday I ran down to Patton Park in the morning and met Abram KJ for a Cutler loop. I had planned to run home, but was feeling pretty gassed afterwards, so gladly accepted a ride home from him.

Thursday I did 6.6 on the roads in the morning at 7:11/mi. pace.

Friday I got the kids to school, then loaded up my gear and headed to Hampton. I met up with the team - Jim Johnson, Kevin Tilton, Matt Veiga (all of CMS); the legendary Josh Ferenc; Eric MacKnight and Shaun Donegan from metro-Saratoga, NY and a bunch of NH guys I didn't know - Andrew Huebner (who ran 2:17 last year), Andrew Drummond, Chris Dunn (a different one than I was expecting), Matt Garfield and Derrick Hamel.

We piled into the team minivans and headed north. I was in van 2 (runners 7-12) with Hamel, Huebner, Garfield, Dunn and Tilton. Kevin was also our driver for the majority of the 24 hours we were out there. We indulged in some pre-race chit-chat on the ride, grabbed lunch at Subway and got to Bretton Woods around 2:30 for our 3:30 start. I was nervous about how well I'd be able to run on only a few weeks of consistent training. I knew the projected expectation was 5:45/mi. for me, but I was really hoping to just run 6:00 pace, especially for my first leg, which was 8 miles in the dark.

Here's an early shot of all of us at Bretton Woods, before our 3:30 takeoff:

Matty V. started things off for us, running the first leg up and down Bretton Woods. There were only five teams starting at 3:30, all the other teams had gone off earlier in the day at half-hour intervals since 6:00 am. Teams were seeded based on their expected times and Jim had given us an ambitious goal of all sub-6:00 pace legs, with some significantly faster.

It was hard waiting around with all the normal pre-race nerves for such a long time: we got to Hampton at 10:30 in the morning, got to Bretton Woods at 2:30, the race started at 3:30 and I didn't run my first leg until 8:00 pm. It was cool to see our guys run so well and that just built up the excitement as I waited my turn. Matt came down the hill in the lead and we never gave it up. From the time JJ took the second handoff we just passed teams the whole rest of the way.

Those of us in Van 2 hung around for the first couple exchanges, then we drove ahead to exchange 6, where we (Hamel) would receive the baton (snap bracelet) from Ferenc. At the exchange, the sun was setting and we were getting ready to have to start wearing our night gear, which we would don from 6 pm to 7 am. Derrick ran a really strong first leg for us, keeping the momentum that the van 1 guys had generated while it was still light out. When Andy Huebner left on his first leg (#8), I knew my time was drawing near and the darkness was finally settling in.

My first leg started at the Madison Elementary School and ran 8 miles along Silver Lake, mostly on Rtes 113 to 41 before turning onto Ossipee Lake Road and ending at a Lutheran campground where I would hand to Chris Dunn (the younger - recent USM grad). I knew the pace had been hot for our boys most of the way, but I was really just looking to run 5:50's or something, so when my Garmin beeped in the dark and showed "5:19" for the first mile, I was a little scared, a little excited. I tried to stay relaxed and managed a 5:34 second mile. Mile 3 was a 5:39 and could sense the slowing trend, but I still had 5 miles to go. I passed one runner each of the first three miles and wouldn't see another soul until mile 6.

Mile 4 was a 5:50 and I had a gut check. I was still ahead of goal pace, but losing time each mile. The leg was mostly flat, but I didn't know what was ahead and I also had no sustained efforts of this length in any recent training...

Mile 5 was a little downhill and I managed to claw out a 5:42.

Mile 6 continued mostly downhill and that was a 5:43 and I felt safe.

Finished with two 5:44's, although I know I slowed quite a bit over the last quarter mile on the dirt roads before I handed to Chris. And I still really ran up on him (foreshadow) before handing off.

I was pretty delighted with a 45:19 for 8 miles based on the running I had been doing. Even in the two weeks since, the glow has faded, but at the time I was really feeling good about it.

I had my longest leg out of the way (my next two were 3.5 and 4.1 miles) and that was a relief. But the fun was just beginning...

We closed out our turn with Dunn and Tilton and then grabbed some food at the exchange (Kevin's elementary or middle school!) Then we drove ahead to exchange #18 where we hoped to catch a little rest before we got the baton back from van 1.

It was a little after 10:00 pm when we finished up, and we were expecting them around 1:30 am, but it took us a long time to drive the course down to the exchange zone. I think we got there at 11:30 or so, still giving us two hours of potential rest, but there was little if any actual sleep that took place, and I didn't have any of it. I stretched out on the grass a couple times and reclined in the front seat of the parked minivan, but the closest I came was a couple really good yawns.

At 1:20, van 1 came in, tired but psyched - they had been passing 50-60 runners per leg - and shortly after that Ferenc cruised in and handed to Derrick and we were off again.

Derrick, Andy H. and Matt G. all had tough second legs, in the dark, hilly, foggy and tired. Matt and I sort of bumped at the exchange as he came off his long leg and I tried to go hard for a short three and a half miles on no sleep at 3:30 in the morning. I cranked a 5:08 opening mile, and then didn't have a whole lot of gas for the next two, but they were ok (5:36, 5:38) based on everything. The last half-mile (my second leg was only three and a half miles) I was trying to pick it up and had a left turn off the main road, then a right onto this sidewalk that led into the exchange where Chris Dunn the younger was waiting. I had a nice little downhill and came soaring in and Chris wasn't quite moving fast enough and I basically ran right up his back. We both went down on the concrete, I was right on top of him and only scraped my knuckles, but I was so dazed by the whole thing I couldn't react very quickly to get off him. I found the crumpled baton underneath us and handed it to him. He had let out a noise of exasperation, frustration and some other stuff as he went down, but he got up with a bloodied knee and took off for his 8 mile leg!

At the next exchange I apologized and he said he forgave me, but that he had run angry the whole way. Can't say I blame him. I had quite the adrenaline boost myself from the whole ordeal, but it wasn't going to last until 8:30 when I would need to run again.

Kevin finished off our second turn in Brandon Newbould's backyard by Bear Brook State Forest just before sun-up and we all re-convened briefly (both vans) before Matty V. took us into the home stretch. We were psyched to be into the final 12 legs, but still had some ground to cover. Going back through some now four-month-old texts, I can see Jim's 7:23 am announcements that "Andy (Drummond) got the scalp" and "we are in first". With 8 runners left to run we had overtaken every team, some of which had started 10 hours before us. Granted, this is not an ultra-competitive event, it's more of a team-builder, but we were certainly taking advantage of the opportunity to do both (compete and team build).

Our van stopped at Dunkin's for some breakfast and I was grateful for the sausage egg and cheese and the coffee in preparation for my final four-mile leg. Derrick, who was running first for us, had a really short leg, so we had to leave him before he got the baton to make sure we had Andy H., our next runner in place to receive. Derrick absolutely crushed his final leg, and handed to Andy, who had a long stretch for his final effort. Things were getting a bit blurry at this point with the lack of sleep, hard running, adrenaline, caffeine, etc., but we were joined by a now-finished van #1 at each exchange and it was fun to have the always beaming Ferenc around before, during and after my final push. I got the baton from Matty G. in an otherwise quiet office park and took off, hoping to run my last 4.1 miles respectably. I was cruising at 5:40ish pace toward North Hampton until I hit a red light crossing route 1 and had to wait for 40 seconds to get going again. There was a safety official there, but he held me up until the light changed. Not that 40 seconds makes a huge difference over 203 miles, but it nonetheless killed my final leg and dropped my average pace to 5:50's. Plus, standing still for that long in the middle of my final leg made for a killer re-start when I could finally go again. I handed to Chris Dunn the younger, with no collision this time, and cooled down a mile or so while Ferenc drove our van ahead. I was feeling really good at this point, all things considered, happy to be done, but proud to have acquitted myself ok on a team that was far fitter than me.

Here's a picture from Andy D. of me finishing up my final leg:

Chris handed to Kevin and we all drove ahead to Hampton Beach to run it in with him. We were excited to see him striding up the sand toward us, and chased him in to the finish chute, as the announcer told an empty parking lot who the winners were. We congratulated each other and then all headed home to crash before the awards and after-party started. It felt a little funny to be competing so hard with noone around to see it, but it was a great time. Not sure if it will ever happen again, so I'm glad I got to be a part of it!

Overall, we ran 203 miles in 19:13:22.4, which means we would have broken 19:13 without my two delays (traffic and collision). We averaged right around 5:40/mi. the whole way and ended up among the fastest teams to ever complete the relay. (Hard to compare times because the course has varied over the years. However, there were a couple Bucknell alumni teams the first years that ran comparable times to ours. And I think another Tilton team that was close, too.) It would have been interesting to have another team nearby running a similar pace.

Here's the link to Andy Drummond's awesome video for anyone interested who hasn't seen it yet on facebook:

Team Cutters Reach the Beach 2017

And photo album.