Boastful Postful

Van #1 at the starting line

J is ready to run

 Slappin' each other some skin after J's first leg finish

The team, minus J, who had to stay home because M was napping, 

and another teammate who chose to nap instead.

The running gods were good to me on my run last night. I did mile repeats for my speed workout. For those of you unfamiliar with my possible incorrect running terms, my workout went like this:

Mile 1: warm up
Mile 2: sprint
Mile 3: normal pace
Mile 4: sprint
Mile 5: normal pace
Mile 6: sprint
and then I cooled down for 1/2 mile.

My first spring mile was a 7:23, which is good for me. My second was a 7:35, obviously not as fast, but okay. At mile 5, running normal pace, I was feeling fatigued and didn't know if I could run quickly for the last mile sprint. I've finally started listening to music while running, and it's so fun! The music seemed to match my pace: faster, more upbeat music on the sprint miles, and more easy-going music on my normal-pace miles. During my last sprint mile, two of my all-time favorite songs came on, "Mr. Jones" by Counting Crows, and "Mysterious Ways" by U2 ("On your knees, boy!" anyone?). LOVE those songs. I was clipping, and that last mile was a 7:13. Wahoo! A sub-seven-minute mile is on the horizon. It felt great.

Onto the relay report! The relay was perfect with one exception. They offered no free food or beverage at the finish line. Super lame. But everything else was great. My first leg was the hardest for me, because it was at about 3 pm, a really warm time of day. I didn't wear my Garmin or my MP3 player. Thankfully it was only 4 miles, so it wasn't torturously long. (Spell check tells me that "torturously" isn't a word. Whatever.) Because the race was near the summer solstice, we had lots of sunlight. As bonuses, we also got a full moon AND a lunar eclipse. Beat that, Hood-to-Coast.

My second leg started at about 11 pm, but I had plenty of moonlight. The radio informed me that it was the 1st-year anniversary of Michael Jackson's death, so I got to run to "Smooth Criminal." Pretty sweet. I passed a person on that run, a good boost to the ego, and I thought that I was passing another really slow person, but that person ended up being one of the sandwich boards, also with a blinking red light, letting me know I had one mile to go.

I was part of the first van, and we had the better sleeping time frame, from midnight to four, so I got a good two or three hours of sleep, after having a shower, for which I was very grateful for both.

My third leg was around 7 in the morning. It was my longest, 7.3 miles, but I held a good pace and kicked it in the last 1 1/2 miles, and felt good when I finished. Our van picked up our team captain, we headed home, and I showered and ate before meeting our second van at the finish line. Boy was it nice having the race finish in our home town!

All in all, great times were had. The Red Wasp was the best captain EVER, so organized and motivated. Everyone's ready to do it again next year.