The Bucket List Runner: 2015 Blue Ridge Relay: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

For the third consecutive year Hey Jack! took to the backroads of the Virginia and North Carolina mountains for the 11th running of the Blue Ridge Relay. LT was again flawless in serving as captain, cheerleader, spiritual advisor, spreadsheet planner, book assembler, and information distributor.

After a series of mid-summer email banter to make sure everyone from last year was on board we were all set. And on board should not be confused with in shape - just willing and able to shell out a couple hundred bucks to spend the better part of two days in a rancid van eating cookies and power bars, running hill after hill, not getting any sleep, and understanding that the next day would be not be pleasant. Having 11 hard commits plus Huegerich meant it was time to determine the running order and project our pace. This involves a highly non-analytical exercise that is completely baseless and is generally met with a great deal of resistance. But hey - it made LT and I feel like we did something worthwhile...

Once the master plan was unofficially hatched it was time to make it official so we all got together for the 'unveiling' of the legs and van assignments. Hank earned a mountain goat leg by taunting me all the up The Bear earlier this summer and John Mills got the other because he seems to actually enjoy running up hill. Ben Duke got the honor of having the highest mileage including the 10.5 climb up Grandfather as his reward for torching the Palmetto Relay. The rest of us tried to run routes we hadn't run before and spread the love just to keep things interesting. Van 1 included Andy Burchfield, Eric Meredith, Ben Duke, Joe Haines, LT, and Huegerich while van 2 included me, Hank Eimer, Michael Banks, John Mills, Luke Stafford, and Knox Tate.

The 12:00 start time was our latest to date with the blazing fast Asheville Running Collective and Charlotte Running Club being the only teams starting behind us and going off at 1:30. We rolled out of Hickory shortly before 9:00 am and as always headed up the mountain feeling really good about ourselves. Then, as usual, we pulled in the parking lot for that painful reminder that everyone starting this late is really fast. Yes, seemingly every one of them weighed a buck-forty with 3 inch slits and shaved Kenyan calves. That's exactly the shot of confidence we needed before the start.

As we roamed the parking lot we noticed a silver haired gentleman that we were certain we could outrun. That just happened to be UNC head coach Roy Williams who was there as the dedicated driver for his son's relay team. He was very approachable and a super nice guy so managed to get a few pictures with him, wished the team well and then headed back to the start.

Andy Burchfield made the trip down from the DC area for the second year in a row which represents a whole new level of crazy. And because of his unwavering commitment we were kind enough to saddle him as our first runner. The guy that gets the easy 4 miles downhill but has to lineup against 10 other guys running for 10 faster teams with 50 vans full of runners watching. He handled it like a champ though and more than held his own.

I was in 2nd van and running 8th which meant two things; I was having subway for lunch and I was not having Chipotle for dinner. Plus collectively our van had about 15 fewer miles than van 1 which they caught on to fairly early on. We headed to West Jefferson to the transition area but not before Knox ducked into a Dollar Tree and came out with balloons, Christmas lights, and some other neon paraphernalia to decorate the van. Now that the essentials were out of the way we waited our turn to break that first sweat.

Mark came barreling down the mountain as the 6th runner and handed to Hank for a short 2.5 miles so finally our van was officially part of the action. We were a little behind schedule but that was expected since the 2nd leg of the race was rerouted because of a fallen tree. Eric might not have appreciated the extra 2 miles but it didn't seem to affect the rest of us and he didn't complain too much. My first leg was a short one, roughly 5K with a climb from mile 1.5 to 2.5 which feels a lot like Joe described it....like running into a brick wall. The elevation profile and my splits for Leg 8 are to the right. John, Luke, Knox and Michael all hammered through their runs to finish our first full rotation which ended with an impromptu birthday party for John complete with the Ms. America sash and cupcakes.

Early on it was pretty clear that we weren't beating last years time - especially not with the detour on leg 2 even though it was relatively slight. Last year nearly all of us were either in the middle of a training cycle or just wrapping one up and personally I was just in better shape and healthier last year. I was coming off a great summer of base building after making a mess of the spring so I was very optimistic until about a week before the race. After running the HCA 5K two weeks prior to the BRR I was scheduled for 14 miles the next day. I've been working with Caleb Masland and team WBP since June and his comments regarding the Sunday long run after the 5K specifically said "KEEP IT SLOW". But in my infinite wisdom I decided a long run on those 5K legs that included some hill work would serve as the perfect BRR training. And I thought if I maintained a moderate pace in the 7:30's it would be a great confidence builder. Just for the record, I'm much better at giving advice than following it. Eventually I started compensating for some quad soreness which resulted in some lower back pain that led to butt pain which put me on the shelf for a while. But I wasn't about to miss this - I mean I had two doctors running with me plus a bucket of ice and a bottle of Ibuprofen so what could possibly go wrong?!

Getting that first rotation out of the way was a relief. For one it's lonely out there running in the middle of nowhere when well over 100 teams have an hour or more of a head start. It really doesn't get fun until later in the night when we start getting in the thick of it and mixing it up with the other teams. Plus it's always nice to spend a little time catching up with our Hickory running buddies from F3 and the Hickory Knuts at the transition zones. Knocking out that first run in van 2 also means it's time to hit up the Chick-Fil-A in Boone. I've eaten a whole lot of CFA sandwiches in my days but something about that BRR sandwich is just on a whole other level.

We decided to try to catch a few winks at the 2nd transition zone and found a good spot under a tree, right next to high grass just perfect for snakes. It wasn't quite 10:00pm so we had a good 2-3 hours to rest and I was wrapped up like a cocoon hiding from natures nocturnal fleet of everything I don't like about camping. For me sleeping during the BRR consists of 30 minutes spent barricading myself in a sleeping bag, an hour and a half of listening to runners yelling, porta-potty doors slamming, and vans driving by before getting 30 or 45 minutes of something comparable to sleep. We set the alarm on our iPhones as if there's a real chance that all 6 of us fall into such a deep slumber that we just sleep right through the exchange. This time we didn't have to rely on our iPhones or our internal clock though. Apparently Banks was stirred by a set of headlights on high beam and promptly woke the rest of us as he yelled, "why don't you turn your effing head lights off." Oddly enough, they did - and just like that we were on the clock again.

Hank made quick work of 4.4 miles and I was up for a 'very hard' 7.4 miles which was basically a 5 mile roller coaster followed by a 2 mile uphill kick in the nuts then a screaming 0.5 downhill to the finish. The only saving grace was that we had finally caught up to several teams so the night running was made easier by focusing on the guy (or girl) in front of you and trying to catch up with them. Otherwise I found myself envisioning various scenarios resembling scenes from Deliverance which lead to those night terror runs and that's just no good for anybody. I was warned not to miss the right turn so I made a note of the street sign just in case some backwoods idiot decided it would be funny to move the sign. And that's happened on more than one occasion so it's good to know your route especially at night. Once I had a few runners in site I was finally poised for my first kills of the relay and looking forward to getting this leg over with.

I approached what I thought was the turn sign but the runners in front of me both went straight.  It's rare for a sign to point straight ahead but all I could hear was a little voice saying, "don't miss the right turn" so I turned right and hoped for the best.  I ran uphill for what seemed like an eternity on a country road flanked by trees on both sides before another team van finally passed by on the way to the next leg. Finally I had some confirmation that I wasn't running aimlessly at 2:00am but the other two runners presumably were and I felt pretty bad about it. In my defense though, I wasn't totally confident in my decision and they were several hundred yards in front of me when I made the turn.

Again Joe's advice, while not especially encouraging was spot on. Something along the lines of that last hill starts sooner than you expect it to and it just seems to go on forever -- and truer words could not have been spoken. I could feel the glute monster waking up in the form of a grumpy little troll that was digging at my right butt cheek with a pick axe. I was really hoping I could maintain something close to a 7:30 pace and even though I had banked quite a bit of time that hill was as advertised.  No streetlights made it impossible to see any potential end in sight. Throw in the switchbacks and you're left with a mind numbing run through the darkness up the side of a mountain closing in on runners that you can't even see. I wouldn't necessarily consider leg 20 'suicidal' as it's listed on the BRR website under Hatch's description but it's definitely worth not looking forward to. In my opinion the Grandfather climb of 10.5 miles is more difficult - the grade doesn't really compare to the climb on leg 20 but the it's all uphill and it just grinds on you.

Once I finally crested the top I just let it roll and finished with a 7:33 pace and was done, like literally. As soon as I handed the band to John I couldn't take another step. The butt troll had me on lock down and as Julie affectionately likes to describe it, I looked like a baby about to take his first step. Lean and think about it, I'm really going to take a step, just put one foot in front of the other, here it goes......na I think I'll just crawl. Finally somebody picked me up and put me in the van knowing that John would be making quick work of his shortest leg of the relay.

I think the downhill finish was my demise and it was pretty clear to everyone except me that my BRR was over. Of course I was optimistic that some ice, rest, and Ibuprofen would do the trick while the rest of our guys finished the second rotation and as a team we were still holding strong. Even though I was unofficially out I had still run the first two legs very close to plan and aside from the extra two miles we weren't too far off from where we wanted to be. We handed back to van 1 sometime after 4:00am and headed to the third transition zone to catch another cat nap at the church that would be serving pancakes the next morning right before Hank was scheduled to run the mountain goat. If someone would have interrupted Banks slumber in the front yard of God's house we might have been in need of divine intervention but fortunately we avoided further incident.

After a couple hours of not being able to walk I was resigned to the fact that running 9.5 miles downhill was clearly not in my best interest nor the teams for that matter. I went to bed thinking a quick sleep might serve me well but that didn't happen. The pancake breakfast did me wrong a few years ago which was really more about my internal plumbing being a wreck than their pancakes but nonetheless - I opt out of the pancake deal now days. Banks stepped in my spot running the 9.5 without hesitation and killed it as we continued with the next man up through leg 35.

I was starting to loosen up a little and feeling short changed by only having run 2 legs so I thought maybe I could get through the final leg. I mean I did have an extra 3 hours or so to walk around and leg 36 wasn't the downhill screamer that I had been scheduled for so why not give it a shot... Well don't worry - there's no Chariots of Fire ending nor did I end up in the E.R. I told the guys to give me 2 miles or 15 minutes before leaving and 12 minutes and 30 seconds later I was all but running backwards looking for them because it just wasn't happening. They saw me waving the white flag and in typical Hey Jack fashion at least half the team piled out of the van and ran the final leg together to finish the race.

We ended up running as the 14 seed and finishing 15th overall with a time of 26:51. Of course anyone reading this blog that wants to improve their position by 1 spot could probably do so by getting us disqualifying because technically Banks wasn't the next man up but we didn't shake things up to improve our time.

Very proud of our team effort and still love this race and running with these guys as much as any individual event I've ever run. In the 2 weeks since the BRR I've put in a whopping 4 miles; 2 miles a week after the race and 2 miles last night. A couple more weeks of light running and hopefully I will be able to shake the butt troll.

And then there's this vicious rumor that Hey Jack! is jumping in the Hood to Coast lottery next month with hopes of running the mother of all relays. 1,050 teams from Mt. Hood (south of Portland, Oregon) to the coast of Seaside, OR. If that doesn't work out we might try our hand at the Palmetto relay again with the full squad. Either way we'll be back at it again soon because YOLO and we're not getting any younger!

Run On!

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