Hello Again & A Brief Reach the Beach Recap

Hello again, lovely blog readers!  Apparently I'm really bad at updating this when I a) am not training for a major race, b) have something resembling a social life, and c) have a new puppy.  But fortunately for you all, I've just started training for the Chicago Marathon, most of my friends are out of town for the summer, and the puppy and I are getting used to each other pretty quickly.  In other words, I'm back to blogging!

My new puppy, Clausewitz (we call him Klaus)

Despite being a totally delinquent blogger the past few months, I think I've only missed writing about one race: the MA Reach the Beach Relay.  I won't subject you to a leg-by-leg recap (anyone who's talked to me since then has probably already heard it), but I will say that the race was a blast!  The girls were amazing, the race was really well organized, the course was beautiful, and oh, by the way, we were unexpectedly awesome!

My team, Pretty (Speedy) in Pink, got 2nd place in the Women's Open division with a time of 28:21:21 (average pace 8:29).  We went into the race thinking we had a shot at being competitive, but I didn't really know what to expect given that no one on the team had run a long-distance relay before and that we didn't have a roster finalized until about 10 days before the race (and even when we did, it was short two runners).  All I can say is, my girls crushed it!

Official team photo, at Wachusett Mountain before the start

Post-race team hug (thanks to Linda Chao for the photo!)

Thanks to an increasingly angry patellar tendon and the whole puppy thing derailing any training plans I might have had, I took the spot in the rotation that only involved three legs of 3.7, 3.3, and 2.7 miles.  I ran them about as well as could be expected given the shape I was in, and only brought up the team's average pace a little bit.  I don't know exactly how much, since I left my GPS watch at home for this one, but I think I ran the first (mostly uphill) leg at around 10 min pace and the second two at around 9 min pace.  I did have some extra fun with that second leg when my headlamp went out on a random back road around 11pm.

I also learned a lot about captaining a relay team, which I might write about in a later post.  Maybe when I'm putting together a team for next year's race?

For now, I'm looking forward to an awesome summer racing season, starting with the North Shore Half Marathon this Sunday. We just got an email from RAM Racing with a weather advisory, so I've got my fingers crossed the heat won't be too bad!  Back in a few days with the recap.