500k relay: Day 2

Probably my least favourite of the days for two reasons. One, slight disorganisation. Two, no champion runs! I ran 8.22km (distance “advertised” 9.1km).

Leg #3: The Mass Start
Difficulty rating: 4
Time start: 7.15am (but I was dropped off with another teammate promptly at 5am. Meaning we were standing around in the middle of nowhere on our own for two hours. Us, the race marshals, and a frisky horse)
Total distance: 4.22
Total time: 23.14
Average pace: 5.30/km
Fastest pace: 4.24/km
Elevation: 42m
Temperature: warm/hot.
This leg not so bad. There are no follow vehicles. The gun goes off and everyone starts like a typical race. There is a police escort before the first runner and behind the last runner. You reach the end of your leg and once everyone has arrived (and is bundled into cars to get to the next change over) the next leg starts. My thought? Please don’t let me be the one with the police car right behind me! I don’t know if I would want to have everyone watching, waiting for me to come in only to be hustled off to the next place. But I don’t have a choice – it all depends on what other runners have been elected to run my leg of the race.
Fortunately – fortunately! – I am not the slowest of the slow runners and finish well ahead of the back (but well back of those ahead).
There was only one water vehicle on the course. They were recruited from one of the teams and were very friendly & provided cups of water. As it wasn’t super hot out yet, I didn’t mind just having the one.

Leg #4: The Cri.
Difficulty rating: 4
Time start: 13.20pm
Total distance: 3.98km
Average pace: 5.37/km
Fastest pace: 4.21/km
Elevation: 0
Temperature: hot & humid
My least favourite. Total chaos! In previous years it was a scenic two loop run around a creek. But floods had taken out one of the bridges and town budget hadn’t replaced it. So we had to run 5 laps around a park. Getting to the park was even less fun! Being told the race would start any moment, those of us who had just set up for lunch didn’t even have time to make it before running down to the creek to start. But wait! No one is at the creek! So we raced back up to the bus to see what is happening. No one there, either! A police car barrels in and announces on the loudspeaker that those of us running the cri must get to a park 1km up the road ASAP as the race is starting momentarily. Chaos! Madness! Panic!
Our poor bus driver – who was rubbing his hands in glory at the spread of lunch set out before him – was dragged back to the bus before getting a single bite to drive six of us up there. Then at the start we were told we would have a 15min wait as they needed to split up the number of runners on the course due to the narrow paths.
Then they told us less than a minute before the gun went off that everyone would be running at once because time was on a budget. And we were off! No fellow teammates to provide us water. I roped our poor bus driver into providing us water at the end. Poor guy! He goes from thinking he’s about to get a nice lunch break to missing lunch so he can hand out water to hot, sweaty runners. Heroically, he didn’t complain.
The course was supposed to be 5k long but no one wanted to correct the race organizers on how many laps they had us run – I was super grateful it was (for the first time) shorter than advertised. And thank you to the other teams who saw us poor support-less runners and handed out cups of water! It’s all in good spirit, after all!

...and then what happened, some may ask? We hopped back onto the bus, drove the 1k back to the picnic site...which was all packed up with two runners waiting for us. The others had started an hour ago, they said. We had to throw everything in the bus (no time for lunch! Us runners were too hot, anyway) and race to catch up with the rest of our team. It was a bit of pressure, but we made it. Phew! We finished at 6.15pm. Start time of the first runner was 4.45am. What a long day! But we did it!
Dinner (as with the night before) was at 7.30pm set up in the motel parking lot. Poor motel guests must have had heart palpations when they see a group of giddy people set up shop in the parking lot and pull out a few beers (though no one planned on getting drunk). But we were all in bed by 8.30pm for a 3am wake-up on Sunday.