adventure race

Yesterday I completed a relay race across the mid-Alantic state where Tammi and I live.  The race had a staggered, handicapped start, with slower teams (based on 5K PB) starting at six, and increasingly faster teams starting every few minutes or so until 10:30.  Less challenging than distance itself--divvied up between seven runners, into legs of no more than nine miles--can be the heat and the logistics, carrying runners, in two cars, from one leg to the next, leaving one car to provide water and support to the runner on the course.  When we started it was about 82, my first leg began about 11:45 and carried me over a beautfiful country road, through open farmland under a cloudless sky.  The natural beauty of my surroundings did little to cool me off, though.  With the sun directly overhead, the road was mercilessly shadeless, but I was able to power through the heat without too much trouble, thanks in part to being well acclimated after a few weeks of high temps here.  My last let started around six pm, and was significantly shorter and cooler.  It ended at the beach, too, and it's a great sensation to end a race with a dip in the cool Atlantic along with the other runners who were happily bobbing in the waves. (NB: I took off my wedding ring before the swim on the advice of a friend who once lost his swimming in a lake.  Anyone else take that precaution?)

By the middle of the race, about 40-50 miles in, our team started passing the teams who had started earlier, and many of the runners we caught up to seemed to be suffering in the heat (as we were), runners of all shapes, sizes, ages, and abilities trudging over hot blacktop under a midafternoon sun, soaked in sweat but persevering nonetheless, sun-baked moving statues of determination.  As one of my teammates marvelled, "If this hurts for us, think about how much it hurts for them!" -- "Us" being a group of serious and experienced runners, "them" being the folks who came out to relay because of a sense of adventure, a desire to take up a challenge, to prove something to themselves, because of the durable novelty of covering great distances on foot.