The Last Leg!!!

LEG 29

This was the leg of doom, what I began at some point over the weekend to call my "3 miles of hell". This was the leg I dreaded for the weeks and hours leading up to it, the one I was pacing back and forth over while waiting at the exchange. I will break it down for you below...

A 3 mile course winding up into the densely wooded Santa Cruz Mountains.
Starting Elevation (compliments of noels71): 589 feet
Start of Leg to Mile 1: rise of 148 feet in elevation
Mile 1 to Mile 2: rise of 300 feet in elevation
Mile 2 to Mile 3: rise of 465 feet in elevation!!!
Ending Elevation: 1502 feet
Hill training in preparation for this leg : close to nil! I know - Dumbass, right?


If you click on noels71's primal scream video you will see him passing off our replacement baton to a oddly large woman in a green sweater... that's me at the start of the leg!

I tore off from the exchange (tearing off for me is like a 10 min/mile pace!) thinking that the ascent would be just around the corner. But no, around it were a couple of small easy inclines which I would have been embarrassed to walk. They were followed by a couple of equally small declines which I ran as fast as possible. The first of the horrific hills caught me by complete surprise. I had expected some crazy hills, but not walls of concrete stretching and winding up and out of sight, ending who knew where!

I walked these as quickly as I could and at times I felt like I was struggling through pits of tar. With every step on these monsters, I was jerking my knees up as high as possible and to a passerby, I have no doubt I would have looked as though I was attempting some strange type of combat march. And combat was what it was, between myself and this mountain that I had chosen to take on.

I never expected to run it and believe me, I wasn't the only one forced into a submission crawl by it. But, I kept going, knowing that if I stopped I'd be giving up on myself and my team. I expected to finish those 3 miles of uphill in an hour.

I reached a point in the climb, just when I thought it might never end (I didn't bother to look at my iPod this time since it had been so far off during my previous runs), when I heard cheering. For a split second my spirits jumped, then I reigned them back, thinking it was perhaps just a runner's support vehicle up ahead rooting them on and not the exchange/end of my 3 miles of hell.

A minute late, after suddenly after coming over a rise, the road leveled out and began a small descent. I could see the glimmering of what looked like glass from van windows through the foliage ahead and could hear shouts and laughter. I picked up the pace again and when I saw the beautiful orange traffic cones around the bend, I went once again into my mawz-sprint and passed the baton to texasbuckeye for the last time. If I weren't so tired, I might have cried! I finished it in 50 minutes and texasbuckeyed took his 3.1 mile similar ascent in 27 minutes, the closest we'd be the entire weekend! Since I gave many runners during the relay the pleasure of being their roadkill, I'll take that for a moment I wasn't SO far off from the rest of my team!

Thanks to all of Team Waiting For Runs and who woulda thunk I'd ever call traffic cones beautiful?

The link to my second leg is...
http://waitingforruns.blogspot.com/2008/04/leg-2-began-for-me-around-1134-pm-on.html