Race Report: Market to Market 2014

WRN Market to Market 2014 :)

Ohmygoodness! Not even sure where to start about our wonderful experience at Market to Market this year!  For those of you who don't know, Market to Market begun in 2008 and is a relay race run from Omaha to Lincoln.  This year, the event had 21 exchange points for a total of 79 miles.  After WRN formed this spring, we thought it would be a fun idea to put a group of us together and compete for the women's division title.  Eight ladies on the team were able to commit, and the entire group made it to the starting line healthy and ready to race.  If you have ever captained a team, you know that this is virtually unheard of--injuries/other commitments always seem to take someone away last minute, and then there are struggles to find replacements so late in the game...especially when so many people in the state of Nebraska are already participating!!

Several of us stayed with my sister and one of her teammates the night before, and woke bright and not so early the next day (our wave didn't start until 9:20am).  We dropped Jenny off at the start as she was our lead off runner and then headed to stage two to meet up with the rest of the team.  We got all of our gear organized and ready to go.  I was our second runner, so I did some stretching/jogging so I'd be ready.  The weather was absolutely gorgeous...crisp and cool as I got ready to run.  As Team Nebraska-Women and WRN were the only two ladies' teams to qualify for two vehicles, I knew that they were going to be our competition for the day.  

I ran three times for a total of 12.8 miles.  Here are the breakdown of my runs:

Stage 2: 3.4 miles

As Jenny, our lead off runner, and to start the race against an olympic trials qualifier (tough for any of us), Team NE had quite the lead on our team when the baton was passed off to me.  I felt great during this first leg--I was so nervous to run...this energy combined with perfect racing temps made for a quick first stage.  Little by little, I caught up to the Team NE runner and I handed off the baton to Amy neck and neck with our competition.  It was on.  I knew that Amy would hold the lead for the the next stage as she's a really strong runner (which she did).  I don't think Team Nebraska thought that they were going to have anyone to worry about, and by the third hand off, I saw their next runner mouth a few words to a teammate.

Stage 10: 5.6 miles

At this point, I have to admit that I didn't feel that well the week after the Twin Cities Marathon.  I have seriously runs tons of marathons (30+) and have done some of them a week apart, so figured I would be fine to race M2M 6 days later.  Well, between getting older and probably the volume I've put on my legs this year, I wasn't feeling it.  I was incredibly worried for this next run as 5.6 miles is a pretty hefty distance.  I can always gut out a strong 3-4 miles, but 5+? That, combined with the fact that I had people depending on me, I was scared...

Since Jenny only had 2.7 miles to run before handing off to me, I had hopped in with another van (Thanks, Angie and Ben!) so was awkwardly waiting by myself at the next exchange.  We had been neck and neck with Team NE through about stage 8, but now the gap was growing.  There was probably about 2 minutes between us when I got the baton.

I ended up feeling pretty bad on this leg, but went as fast as my legs would go.  I thiiiiink I was running about 7 minute miles by this point (I've stopped wearing my GPS), a far cry from the smokin' fast paces that my teammates were turning in.  Dang.

Stage 18: 3.8 miles

For some reason, I had it in my head that this run was 3.4 miles.  Upon looking at my last leg as the day went on, I saw that I was wrong...very wrong! That extra .4 was faaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrr for a final leg! (Meh--not really, but I was exhausted!)  I once again didn't feel the best, but gutted it out as best I could before my final hand off with Amy.  At this point, we were at least 5 minutes behind Team NE, and I knew that the third place team was pretty far behind us as well (I hadn't seen them at any recent exchange points), so we basically just had to hold good splits for our last couple runs to secure second place.

Morgan had a great final leg, and our team ended up finishing in 8:59:53, which is an average of 6:47 pace.  We were 2/79 for women's only teams, and overall placed 15/511.  Even more impressive (to me at least) is that we would have placed in every single category (Open and Mixed divisions).

To all my teammates (Jenny, Amy, Ann, Alyssa, Leah, Kylie, and Morgan) THANK YOU for everything each of you did to make this an amazing day! I had so much fun with you all! Can't wait for next year! :)

Complete results can be found here: http://jms.racetecresults.com/results.aspx?CId=16370&RId=111

Happy running, y'all! :) It's been a gorgeous Fall!