Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Reach the Beach Ragnar Relay 2014

Confirmation that runners are truly insane is volunteering to participate in a 207 mile relay race. I was invited to join a team running in this year’s Reach the Beach run in New Hampshire that goes from Cannon Mountain at 2000 odd feet down to Hampton Beach and, oh yeah, it was an experience.

If you don't know what one of these relay events are like, this is how it works:

The first thing you do is get a team of 12 runners together and split them up into two groups of 6 runners, each group has a van. Preferably, each group of 6 can get along pretty well with each other - and this is important, because each group is going to spend the better part of the next 24 to 40 hours in very close proximity to each other. Seriously close.

The next thing is you divvy up running rotations. There are 36 segments, so each runner will ideally run 3 legs. The distance of each leg is determined by the relay event organizers, officially defining a "transfer point", with legs varying between 3 to 9 miles more or less. So, "runner #1" starts the first leg - everybody piles into the van and you drive down to the next transfer point, and he/she passes the baton to "runner #2", and so on. After you cycle through your 12 runners, runner #1 gets another go, and the cycle continues until you "reach the beach" ie the finish line. No hotels, no stopping. You are always hopscotching the current runner. 

Here is the elevation map... wicked for those of us (me) who have spent the last 12 months running on flat terrain:


Each team has to have a name – ours was “Close the Gap”. There is a significance to it, but I don’t remember what it was about... Other teams had crazy names like: “Girls gone Miled”, “Fuster Clucks”, “Beach Balls and Bikinis”, and so on… One of my favorites was “Out of Breathalyzers”.

The teams are divided into 2 vans. Vans 1 and it's 6 runners go through the first 6 segments and then meet up with Van 2, where upon Van 2 takes over for 6 segments and the folks in Van 1 get a little break until they take over at the end of the 12th segment. And then Van 2 gets a little break, and so on.... You sort of getting the drift?

It all sounds very straight forward, and it is, except that we are talking about more than 500 teams, each of which has 12 runners.  Some teams are "elite" teams with only 6 runners, or in our case 11, due to a last minute drop by a team member. Believe it or not, it took us 2 hours to figure out how to fill in the segments that the dropped runner would have run.

The transfer points are chaotic and crazy with vans pulling in and out, runners finishing their segment and handing off their baton (or in some case arriving and not having someone to hand off to because: a) the Van is late b) the van got lost c) the new runner is not ready d) the new runner is in a porta-pot, or maybe e) the runner is so incredibly fast that he/she is beating expected times....). Remember that are over 500 teams and there are two vans per team!  That’s a lot of traffic. This picture is from one of the very "calm" transfer points.


Did I mention that this was a non-stop event? I didn't sleep a wink for 40 hours. It's been a long time since I've done that...

Ok, so let's run through this: I was runner #8 and in Van 2 (the "cool" Van - btw; apparently there is a bit of competition for coolness between the vans...).  At the transfer point runner #7 hands off to me and I take off for a ~6.7 mile jaunt. No biggie; the course goes from the mountains to the beach so it's all an easy downhill, right?  No way dude - we're in New Hampshire - and it is freaking hilly! And the down hills are brutal!  But I gut it out and run hard. But oops, there is going to be a problem...

There are so many vans associated with the event that we have created our own traffic jam in one of the little New Hampshire towns. And I mean serious traffic jam – these are two lane roads and we have overwhelmed the traffic capability. A couple of miles out from the town (and my transfer point) I can see that vans and local cars are all backed up and I start thinking about what do I do if my van didn't make it to the transfer point with the next runner. Do I keep running? Do I just kind of hang around? What is the protocol? So as I'm pondering my options I happen to pass a van that has an arm hanging out the window with a water bottle and I'm think "damn I could use some water", and I realize that it's my van, they see me coming and were thoughtful enough to realize that I might need some water, but even better, had already busted out our next runner who was trekking on foot to the transfer point! Awesome! I happened to catch up with her about a half mile from the transfer point and we jogged in together for the official hand off. Hooraa, one down for me.

But now it's back into the van (after walking back through the traffic to find it), squeeze into the designated "stinky" seat (no time for post run stretching) and we rush to get to the next transfer point before our new runner gets there. Now I can give myself a wet-nap bath, get out of my sweaty running duds (safely locking them into a zip lock bag to reduce some of the stinkiness), and do a little stretching.

My first run had started at about 5PM, and this pic is one of our runners coming in from the dark at around 8PM. My next run, leg #20, isn't until around 3AM. Yeah, you read it correctly. 3AM. But I can't stretch out in the van and take a nap - there just isn't room. It’s just a minivan.. We've got bags, snacks, fluids, clothes, towels, maps, garbage, etc. it's a packed van. Plus there are things to do - like, someone has to drive, someone else needs to navigate, someone needs to keep a eye on a stopwatch so that we can keep track of the runner we just started, the runner that just finished their segment needs to get themselves cleaned up a bit, and so on... Hopefully, we get the to next transfer point in enough time to let the upcoming runner change into new (and dry and better smelling) running duds and ideally warm up for their run. Oh, and we need to keep the other van updated on our progress so that they can be sure to be at the next Van Transfer Point so that they can take over for their 6 rotations. There is a fair amount of necessary coordination and organization. 

We (Van 2) finished our first rotation around 8:30PM, sending Van 1's first runner off with a big cheer. We dive into a restaurant eat and try to relax a bit. Then it's back into the van and we navigate our way to the next Vehicle Transfer Point, roughly an hour away. As soon as we get there (a school parking lot) we try to find a place to park and hopefully catch some zzz's. But this is not a nice quiet school parking lot...  There are at least 200 odd vans pulling in and out, there are people (trying) to sleep on whatever patch of grass they can find - picture cocoon-like blobs (runners rolled up in sleeping bags) scattered helter-skelter everywhere - people (trying) to sleep in their vans - car alarms going off because someone accidentally hit the Panic button, headlights, backup beeps, trucks with flashing/rotating beacons... Are you getting the idea yet that this was not the place for some rest? You got it...

Ok - so it's getting close to my turn to run again... Do you remember that our team was down a runner? So, out of all this we shuffled rotations and distances around and I'm picking up a couple extra miles in order to somewhat relieve the guy running before me (because he’s a stud and he picked up another segment). That means that we are going to pull off to the side of the road at a location determined by us and wait for him to reach us (and find us in the dark) for the baton hand off. It's 3AM. Dark. 40-odd degrees. Country road. Hilly. We had already passed a van that pulled off to the side but missed seeing a deep ditch and fell into it, breaking an axel and who knows what else - bad night for them – hope they bought the extra insurance :-(. 

And so we are waiting. I'm all set. Reflective vest. Headlamp strapped to my forehead (I've never run with one before). Blinky light clipped in front and one in back. I'm ready. And we're waiting.  Did he run by us and we missed him?  There are lots of vans and lots of runners going by... Easy to miss him...

But suddenly we spot him as he is passing us - we did almost miss him! and I'm off. Now I'm off on this surreal run - ok, it's only 5.5 miles, no biggie there, but it was just weird.

I'm expecting a run down a quiet, rolling, dark country road illuminated by what's left of the super-moon and guiding my way with my headlamp. Oh no.. not so much... It was not quiet and it was not dark. The road was a constant parade of vans leapfrogging their runners.  Plus, the pavement was not perfectly smooth - hey, it's a rural road, what did I expect? So I had to concentrate on where I was stepping to avoid potholes or cracks in the road or rocks and so on...  I found it helpful to draft a runner and let her find most of them for me. Yeah, it would have been way more chivalrous of me to let her draft me and let me stumble through the mine fields, but hey, she insisted on passing me and I decided to keep up and follow her. Besides..., well, you know.....  So anyway, I never saw much of the moon. The bright side is that I also never had to over-anticipate an upcoming hill because I could never see it coming - I just knew t was there when I hit it. The downhill ones were the biggest surprise because all of a sudden I'm loading up my quads and wondering just how steep and long the damn thing is going to be.

One of the other elements of the event is the concept of "road kills", i.e. how many people have you passed. I'll tell you right now that I got passed a lot, even though I was running at what I thought was a respectable 8:15-8:30 pace. At one point I get passed by this one bonehead who mutters to me as he passes "road kill!" And I shout up to him "yeah, and I've got 30 years on you - how do you feel now?!" To which he now felt some measure of chagrin and I think said "sorry". Some vans made a big deal of it by decorating their van with tally marks of their "kills". It's all good - I get it ;-).  I just thought it was funny.

The hardest part is the third segment, especially after having no sleep. Three of our guys had to run a total of 4 segments so this last leg would be even tougher for them. I managed to rest a little bit by laying down on some grass at the last vehicle transition point while we waited for Van 1’s last runner. With the help of a little 5HR energy shot I gave my last 6.8 miles all the game I had, still managing to maintain an 8:15-8:30 pace. My quads were getting hammered on the down hills and my calves and hams screamed at me on the up hills. From an endurance perspective I seemed fine, but my legs did not like the terrain. I was sooooo happy to finish.

Once we launched our last runner on the last and final segment of the event, we all cram ourselves back into our van and scoot down to the finish line area. Now we are truly combating with all 1000+ vans, plus local traffic (the town of Hampton must of hated us!). Fortunately we had rented a house within a half mile or so from the finish line and could park our van at the house and walk over. The temptation to jump into a shower before doing so was huge, but if we did we would have missed our finishing runner. The bummer of being the last runner is that he had to run about 3/4 of a mile on the beach to the actual finish line – I’m not sure that I would have had the juice in my legs to do that through the sand! But here he trudged, running in his socks, shoes in hand, gamely claiming a "road kill" at the finish line, and we all joined in with him to cross the finish line together with the announcer calling out the name of our team. It was great to be done. Now, where’s the food and where’s the beer!!

We weren't able to capture a "crossing the finish line" picture, but we did get a group pic at the end. That's the beer and food tent behind us - lets go already!


540 teams signed up to run, 530 started, 522 finished. The fastest team finished in 20hr 24min (an incredible 5:54 pace), the slowest finished in 37hr 30min.  We finished in 28hr 43min (an 8:18 pace), 133rd place overall.

From an event organizational perspective, I was impressed. The race organizers had to coordinate an entire 207 mile route and all that it entailed; through towns and villages, arranging transfer points, traffic and police, signage (i.e. runners: go this way.. Vans: go this other way..), do whatever they can to avoid totally annoying the entire population of  New Hampshire, organizing volunteers (especially tough on those needed to work the midnight hours), and so on. I suspect that it was a tremendous undertaking. I totally appreciate their work and efforts - thank you.

It was truly a different experience for me, so different than running an individual event – fun at so many different levels, hard at others, as well as being challenging. I was running with a team of whom I only knew one person and fortunately we all got along great and helped each other. I’d like to do it again and if I have that opportunity I’ll have a better training routine and a better race-day strategy to manage my legs.  Hooraah

Next up, Honeymoon Island Half Marathon November 8 !

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