Park2Park Relay: Part 2

Considering I just sliced my finger on a pizza cutter, I am not sure how great my typing will be, but I will still try and get my part 2 post done today. I have said multiple times, I should never be allowed in the kitchen. I was just cutting microwaved pancakes that ultimately had to be thrown out b/c too hard. Now Clark has taken over (as it should be).

Let's see where did we leave off......  That's right, we dropped Ryan off after our near fatal collision with a moving truck (if you have no clue what I am talking about you should go back and start with Part 1). With Ryan running the 5 of us girls realized we were clueless about directions without him. I knew we needed to get to the Brownsburg soccer fields, but we collectively had a hard time figuring out how to get there. I would say for the most part we had good driving directions or you just followed the runner's path, but Ryan was in the woods and unless I missed it, there were no driving directions for this part. Since I was the next runner, I was starting to act less than calm. That whole...can never be late panic feeling was starting to set in. I was frantically trying to call my husband then when that didn't work, I called Shane (my PT). By that point the girls had figured it out and we got to where we needed to be with enough time to take this photo of me (looking cool as a cucumber). As you can see from the photo, I changed clothes after the first leg. I had enough clothes to change after every run and at the end. This however was the only change I did. Just didn't care as much after that, and it was so hot that we all stopped sweating (you think I am kidding but I am not). For this leg I also borrowed Amy's headphones and Jaime's iPod shuffle (since my brand new shuffle is still lost in Cleveland). Luckily I like Jaime's taste in music.

 So here comes Ryan finishing up his first leg.

 Go Christy go....... This was probably my hardest leg of the race b/c it was just as long as my first run but I no longer had fresh legs and it was hot...very hot! Having said that it was also probably my most enjoyable part of the race b/c it was in my neck of the woods. This leg ended up in the park that is less than 2 minutes from my house and had me running down roads I drive on all the time. This is the "wooden park" that my kids play in quite often.

 Here I am at the very end of my run. I was giving it my all and nearly collapsed when I tagged Lisa. I was so happy that this leg also had a trail part right before this last straight away. I loved getting out of the sun and jumping over branches, etc. As Lisa would say, I had at least 2 road kill on this leg. Might have been more, but I don't remember. My pace for this leg was around 7:45-7:50 per mile. I forgot to turn my garmin off for at least a minute at the end so I had to take that into account.

 I guess I did not have any pictures of Lisa's start to her second leg. We drove to the next exchange which happened to be in the neighborhood attached to mine. The very same neighborhood that I do almost all of my training runs in. I loved that it was part of the course. Here are Amy, Jacque and Jaime waiting for Lisa to come in.

 Here is Lisa sending off Jacque. I would have had more pictures of Lisa but at this point in the day I saw that runner 1 from the team Fantastachicks (which has some of my best Hendrick's girl friends on it) was at the wrong exchange. She made the wrong turn and never went into the trail part leading her through to the park. I felt HORRIBLE for her. I was trying to get my friends on that team to answer their phones so I could tell them she was in the wrong place. They didn't answer, and so she had to run all the way back and follow the correct route. What should have been a 4.34 mile run turned into a 6.34 mile run in 90+ degree heat. She was such a sport to not just quit right there. 

 Here is Jacque on her leg of the run.

 I have a million awesome running pictures of Jacque so here is another one.



Here Jacque has tagged Jaime (our runner #4) and she takes off. Someone should tell Jacque she can stop running now:) 



 It was somewhere around this point that we started going a little ahead of our runners and stopping the van and then handing them cold water to pour over themselves. We were in the open sun with not a cloud to be seen. We all were so hot that we just kept saying we were no longer sweating. I found out later the the pavement temperature was over 104 degrees. 

Jaime is happily done and Amy takes off!  



 Here is Amy completing another hard leg of our race!

I am not sure why I have no pictures of Ryan on his second leg. I just don't. Sorry man!! I know he was once again on the trails for some of his run. He did great!!

We were 2/3rds of the way done and cruising right along. We were all doing so well that we knew we would be done before our predicted time of 4pm. We thought for sure that Clark's team was going to pass us up on this part of the race. It became our goal to try and not let this happen. We would run into them briefly at the exchanges or see them coming to one as we were leaving. So far they had not passed us. Keep in mind they started this relay 45 min later than our team so yes they are faster but still had not made up that 45 minutes. Clark's post after he ran his second leg, "7:14 pace on last leg. Probably 7min the first 2 (he was talking miles), 7:40 the last 2." So he was slowing down...WIMP!!!



As for Ultra man Keith, the texts I got from Shane during this time were, "38 done. Slowing and not feeling great. Walking more but making progress. Leaving Danville." Little later... "Around 10 to go. He is walking a lot more now." The fact that he was still moving forward at all at that point is absolutely incredible. We saw a few of the Ultra men out on the course and they were ALL walking by this point. We gave fluids and gel blocks to one. Keith was still way ahead of all other Ultra runners.

So that is it for the second part of this race. I was still having a wonderful time. I worried the day would seem to drag on but it went so fast. You never waited long at the exchanges. It was fun and exciting the entire way. If I can get these kids in bed I will try and write my third and final post with the conclusion of our race. If not, stay tuned and check back tomorrow night................