Blue Ridge Relay 2008
http://bojordan.com/log/?p=588

Last weekend was the Blue Ridge Relay, which is 209 miles and 24+ hours of sick quad- and hamstring-bashing. Our Crazy Legs team showed up with a full twelve-person roster, and pulled out an impressive seventh-place (out of 75+ teams) in 26:45.

The view from “Goat Hill”, somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains

I ran position eight, with a first leg of 4.5 miles (moderately hilly), which I tried to run at my 5k pace. My overnight leg was 8 miles (nightmare dark mountain up, up, up, then screaming down), during which I experienced repeated heartburn worse than any college beer and wings episode. A sunburn and a general lack of sleep during the preceding week almost got the better of me before the night run, but passing a bunch of people delivered enough oh-so-lovely adrenaline to keep the feet turning over.

Mike “Goat” Smith cranking Goat Hill

At the top of Goat Hill, I got the hand-off for my last leg, which was 9.4 miles downhill with over 2000 feet of descent. I cranked it as best I could, averaging sub-6s. My quads were destroyed for a week.

Prior to downhill bash (thanks Cheryl for the pic)

Coach Tino rounding the corner for the finish

The finish was in downtown Asheville. Luckily, the downtown Y allowed participants to shower afterward, so everyone was able to survive the ride back to Charlotte.

Two vans’ worth of Crazy Legs

I’d go on about how fun the team was, but it would mostly be “you had to be there” stuff. Which, of course, is what makes these sorts of things worthwhile. I fully expect to run this event again, probably with much the same crew, and preferably as an ultra team (running more, but avoiding all the waiting around). Also, I’ll get more than three hours of sleep the night before the race next time.

I have a bunch more pictures at this link, and Mike’s Flickr archive is at this link.