After loading up my husband's truck and traveling to Iowa the night before, we arrived at the start an hour before our wave was set to head out. (To ease course congestion, waves go off every 30 minutes from 5:30am to 9:30am.) We were set to begin at 9:30am in the championship wave. Checking out the starting waves and looking at the teams we were starting with, I only saw one other female team. As we were picking up our packet, we ran into Ben...who told us that we could have an interesting day because on paper, we both looked equal. Here we go..
As our ladies came in from their first legs, they said that the run was very difficult because it was so windy (30 mph headwind??)...I was our 4th runner and was slated to run 4.9 miles for my first leg (so, really, it's only 4....right ladies?! lol). Hoooooly cow, what a tough run! My garmin didn't locate the satellite until probably a mile in so I was thinking that I'd only have to run until it beeped at 4 miles. What a tough run! The trail I ran on was mostly wide open, but a few places was sheltered by trees. After passing off to Michelle, I ate a sandwich and drank some water to begin the recovery process and get ready for my next run.
Around this time, we started to notice that our competition, an alumni team from a local college, was following us extremely closely. And so the back and forth battle began that lasted the entire day.
As the course wove around, the wind factor died down a bit, but running conditions remained difficult as the heat began to rise. By the time I started my second run, it was over 80 degrees. I was back on the trail for 5.1 miles. This time, my run was very sheltered by trees, but since I can probably count on my fingers the number of nice days we could have run outside this spring, that temperature felt terrible to me. When I got the baton from Amy, the "W" team (they had a big one on their jersey) was pretty close behind her. I ran all 5 miles with the mission to not get passed. Although I didn't end up getting passed, she was literally right behind me at the exchange which didn't put Michelle in the best spot.
Our next round of difficult weather was rain. I typically do not mind running in just rain, but with the lightning, we were hoping that we didn't get pulled off the course during the race. According to the radar, bad stuff was coming our way around 4pm. Motivation to run faster? My last run was a quick 2.8 miles. When Amy passed off to me for the final time, she had maintained the lead over W. I feel like my strength is going hard for shorter distances, so I felt confident that the girl who was pursuing me wouldn't catch me. However, I wanted to put as much distance between us as possible so that Michelle would be in the best position possible to start the final leg. This third run felt great to me. Although raining, the temps had now dropped to the low 60s. The trail winded around, went up and down, and offered lots of variety that made this final run pass extremely quickly. After passing the baton off, Shannon guessed we held the lead by about one minute. We loaded up everyone in the truck and headed to the finish.
The way that the relay works is that you meet your final runner and finish a final short portion of the race as a team...I'm guessing it was about 600 meters?? The final runner is the one who needs to cross with the timing chip and the entire team needs to finish together. The rain was REALLY coming down as we parked and waited for Michelle and W to come in. When we spotted Michelle, she was IN FRONT of W!! Everyone was super excited as we prepared for the last part of the race. It looked like it was going to be a sprint to the finish between our two teams, so Shannon quickly formed a game plan. When Michelle got to us, she was extremely tired but did a great job of pushing it to the finish line.
Honestly, this finish was ridiculously exciting!
Afterwards, we got a few pictures, congratulated Michelle on a stellar last leg, and gathered up our gear to go home. I quickly ran over the W team and said, "Thank you for making this such a competitive and exciting day. We had a great time running with you all!" They were gracious, all smiles, and offered our team a congratulations. Isn't this how running and racing should be?
Watch out, M2M IA 2015...we'll be back for round three! Shannon, Sarah, Amy, Lindsey, and Michelle...you are all great runners and I'm blessed to have you in my lives! :)
Complete race results can be found here: http://www.pigmantri.com/jmsracing/results14/mkttomkt_ia14.html
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