It's been a busy couple of weeks. This last weekend, I joined 11 other runners in an event called The Relay, a a 199-mile race from Calistoga (the northern part of California's Wine Country) to Santa Cruz. I was looking forward to the event before we got into it, but it was more fun than I imagined it would be.
(if you're interested in seeing a few pictures, here are some from my camera.)
Here's how it works: each team of 12 runners divides into two vans of 6 runners each. The 199-mile race is divided into 36 legs; each runner runs 3 legs of varying distances and difficulties. For example, I was runner #6 on our team; I ran leg 6, leg 18, and leg 30, for a total of 13.4 miles over 30 hours. That's one of the unique challenges of The Relay versus other distance runs: in a half or full marathon, you do all of your running in one shot; when you're done, you're done. In The Relay, when you finish one leg you've got to recover within hours to get ready for your next leg, which can be at weird times (I ran at 1:30PM, then later that night at 1:00AM, then again the next morning at 11:00AM, and that was one of the more conventional groupings of running times...imagine you're the guy who's running at 4AM for his second leg; ugh).
The reason for 2 vans per team is to reduce traffic congestion: with 200+ teams participating, the route simply can't handle 400 vans all at once, so we're split up. Van 1 starts at the starting line in Calistoga, with Runners #1 - 6. Van 1 generally follows the same route as the runner, which gave us lots of opportunity to cheer on our teammates or throw food at them as we saw fit.
The exchange between Runner #6 and #7 is also a van exchange; Van 1 is done for a few hours, and Van 2's runners are on, running legs 7-12 while Van 1's runners can rest for a few hours before driving to the next van exchange point (where leg 12 ends and leg 13 begins, several hours's worth of running later).
I ran my first leg around 1PM, which brought us into downtown Napa. We said hi to our Van 2 friends, then took off toward Sonoma to grab a nice lunch and take a short nap in the Sonoma Square park, then we headed out toward Petaluma, near the next van exchange point.
My next run, leg 18, has to be the best run of the whole relay: I started in Sausalito around 12:45AM on Saturday night, ran along the waterfront, then uphill to the Golden Gate Bridge under perfectly clear skies and a radiant full moon. Normally the bridge is closed to pedestrian traffic at night, but bridge staff was there to open the pedestrian gates for each runner as we came by; I felt part of a privileged class as I entered the bridge, running as fast as my breathing would let me go. When I handed off the bracelet at the end of my run, I was too excited to sleep. Van 1 headed to the home of one of our teammates for showers and food, and about 2 hours of sleep; we had to get back in the van to catch our next exchange point at Canada College in Redwood City at 6:30AM.
My third and last run was 3.1 miles of unrelenting climbing along Highway 9 in Saratoga. It was not easy climbing, but the idea of being almost done kept me going, and seeing the exchange point, with scores of vans and tons of people cheering, gave me a last burst to finish the run. We in Van 1 then drove toward the finish line, at the Santa Cruz boardwalk, while Van 2 runners ran the last 6 legs. They arrived at 4:00PM Sunday afternoon, 30 hours and 36 minutes after we started.
All in all, we got about 3 hours of sleep over the weekend; we all paid for that the next day. But nobody got injured, and we finished faster than our estimated time. (when you enter the race, you are required to submit an estimated time of arrival) What I like better than finishing early was how close we were to our estimated time: we were about 15 minutes off of our estimate. 15 minutes out of almost 31 hours is pretty damned close (less than 1%). The course has a Sandbaggers award, given to the teams that run more than 2 hours faster than their estimated times. The award is not a compliment; those teams get disqualified.
I think the coolest thing about the race, other than running over the Golden Gate Bridge in a full moon all by myself, was the van exchange points, where all the Van 1's and Van 2's met. With 197 teams competing, The Relay had to restrict traffic, so Van 1 was only allowed to drive on the parts of the route where Van 1 runners were; we weren't allowed to support Van 2 runners on their routes. That meant most of the time, we didn't see our Van 2 teammates...except at the van exchange points, where Runner #6 (me) handed off to the 1st runner of Van 2 (Runner #7), and when Runner #12 handed back off to Runner #1. Those van exchange points were held in places with huge parking lots, like Canada College. The energy of all those people was amazing, and the vans had some hilarious signage and team names (our team's name: The Fat Bastards, which is soooo not true).
I think being around all these other crazy runners, almost 2400 of them, was what ultimately made this event as much fun as it was. Everybody was supportive of everybody else: I would be running alone on a difficult part of my run and somebody else's van would drive by and honk in support, the runners in the van clapping and shouting out support. We did the same with other runners.
I would do it again. And I would recommend it to other runners who are looking for something less solitary than a marathon.
(if you're interested in seeing a few pictures, here are some from my camera.)
Here's how it works: each team of 12 runners divides into two vans of 6 runners each. The 199-mile race is divided into 36 legs; each runner runs 3 legs of varying distances and difficulties. For example, I was runner #6 on our team; I ran leg 6, leg 18, and leg 30, for a total of 13.4 miles over 30 hours. That's one of the unique challenges of The Relay versus other distance runs: in a half or full marathon, you do all of your running in one shot; when you're done, you're done. In The Relay, when you finish one leg you've got to recover within hours to get ready for your next leg, which can be at weird times (I ran at 1:30PM, then later that night at 1:00AM, then again the next morning at 11:00AM, and that was one of the more conventional groupings of running times...imagine you're the guy who's running at 4AM for his second leg; ugh).
The reason for 2 vans per team is to reduce traffic congestion: with 200+ teams participating, the route simply can't handle 400 vans all at once, so we're split up. Van 1 starts at the starting line in Calistoga, with Runners #1 - 6. Van 1 generally follows the same route as the runner, which gave us lots of opportunity to cheer on our teammates or throw food at them as we saw fit.
The exchange between Runner #6 and #7 is also a van exchange; Van 1 is done for a few hours, and Van 2's runners are on, running legs 7-12 while Van 1's runners can rest for a few hours before driving to the next van exchange point (where leg 12 ends and leg 13 begins, several hours's worth of running later).
I ran my first leg around 1PM, which brought us into downtown Napa. We said hi to our Van 2 friends, then took off toward Sonoma to grab a nice lunch and take a short nap in the Sonoma Square park, then we headed out toward Petaluma, near the next van exchange point.
My next run, leg 18, has to be the best run of the whole relay: I started in Sausalito around 12:45AM on Saturday night, ran along the waterfront, then uphill to the Golden Gate Bridge under perfectly clear skies and a radiant full moon. Normally the bridge is closed to pedestrian traffic at night, but bridge staff was there to open the pedestrian gates for each runner as we came by; I felt part of a privileged class as I entered the bridge, running as fast as my breathing would let me go. When I handed off the bracelet at the end of my run, I was too excited to sleep. Van 1 headed to the home of one of our teammates for showers and food, and about 2 hours of sleep; we had to get back in the van to catch our next exchange point at Canada College in Redwood City at 6:30AM.
My third and last run was 3.1 miles of unrelenting climbing along Highway 9 in Saratoga. It was not easy climbing, but the idea of being almost done kept me going, and seeing the exchange point, with scores of vans and tons of people cheering, gave me a last burst to finish the run. We in Van 1 then drove toward the finish line, at the Santa Cruz boardwalk, while Van 2 runners ran the last 6 legs. They arrived at 4:00PM Sunday afternoon, 30 hours and 36 minutes after we started.
All in all, we got about 3 hours of sleep over the weekend; we all paid for that the next day. But nobody got injured, and we finished faster than our estimated time. (when you enter the race, you are required to submit an estimated time of arrival) What I like better than finishing early was how close we were to our estimated time: we were about 15 minutes off of our estimate. 15 minutes out of almost 31 hours is pretty damned close (less than 1%). The course has a Sandbaggers award, given to the teams that run more than 2 hours faster than their estimated times. The award is not a compliment; those teams get disqualified.
I think the coolest thing about the race, other than running over the Golden Gate Bridge in a full moon all by myself, was the van exchange points, where all the Van 1's and Van 2's met. With 197 teams competing, The Relay had to restrict traffic, so Van 1 was only allowed to drive on the parts of the route where Van 1 runners were; we weren't allowed to support Van 2 runners on their routes. That meant most of the time, we didn't see our Van 2 teammates...except at the van exchange points, where Runner #6 (me) handed off to the 1st runner of Van 2 (Runner #7), and when Runner #12 handed back off to Runner #1. Those van exchange points were held in places with huge parking lots, like Canada College. The energy of all those people was amazing, and the vans had some hilarious signage and team names (our team's name: The Fat Bastards, which is soooo not true).
I think being around all these other crazy runners, almost 2400 of them, was what ultimately made this event as much fun as it was. Everybody was supportive of everybody else: I would be running alone on a difficult part of my run and somebody else's van would drive by and honk in support, the runners in the van clapping and shouting out support. We did the same with other runners.
I would do it again. And I would recommend it to other runners who are looking for something less solitary than a marathon.
Posted at 07:09AM Apr 24, 2008
by drapeau in General
| Permalink
| Tags:
|
|
|
|
